Digi Unlock
by Zero Output
Summary: Digi-Unlock has relocated to: / digiunlock
1. Chapter 1

We have rewritten Digi-Unlock and moved it to it's own account. You can find the link here: /digiunlock

Please re-read the fanfic even if you have read it before. We have added so much to it, it's crazy! We have not added the new chapter yet. Coming soon haha.. Thanks for stickin' it out!


	2. Chapter 2

**CHAPTER TWO**

**Incarnations**

**It** was day one in the Kingdom of Ruelah and Ken had woken up and got off of a hard metal bed. "Well," he cracked his back "I definitely don't play a rich character." His curiosity was the first thing to kick in, aside from the pain in his back. He stood up and caught his reflection in the mirror on a nearby desk.

Horror.

He stared at the eerie reflection staring back at him.

His left arm was metal, his arm was a long rod, and it was encased around bars and spikes. A shield covered with spikes masked over his fleshly-gloved hand. Bolts decorated his shoulders. His right arm was a large laser cannon. The letter 'V' was shown twice on the arm, and instead of an elbow, he had a tiny planet Earth. "I don't even want to know" he shook his head and fought off shuddering.

His torso was covered by a breastplate, which slowly moved into his stomach, a spiraling mess of black wires surrounded by protective iron bars. His figure seemed so strong and yet so fragile. His left leg matched his left arm, a rod leading into those wires, protected by bars and leading into a huge metal boot. His right leg and arm matches as well. His thigh cut off at the knee and appeared not to be connected to his leg by anything else except for a mini floating planet earth again. His foot was a boot covered in spikes. It was a wonder how his leg could even function, and yet when he moved, it complied.

As a finishing touch, he had a wing shaped visor across one of his eyes. His hair, although now black, stayed the same. Just then a man rushed in wearing a blue uniform marked with a 'V' over the breast. "Is something the matter, Sir Wedge?"

Ken looked around the room slightly confused and soon realized the man was talking to him. "Oh. Me? Um, yeah. I had a nightmare."

"A night mare, sir?"

"Yeah, um, never mind."

"All right then, sir. Remember, you're leading your troops to practice today."

"My troops? Oh. Right," Ken wiped away some sweat beads from his forehead and tried to stop his voice from going awkwardly squeaky "I remember now... heh" he smiled and the guard left the room.

**It** was day one inthe Forest of Jezaiba and Matt found himself smack dab in the middle of the woods. There were absolutely no signs of civilization within a 50-mile radius.

His clothes consisted of white bandages wrapped loosely around every inch of his torso and left leg. He had shoulder pads and chain male on his arms leading down to navy blue gloves. His pants were colored medium-sea-green and in the center of his brown belt held a gold throwing star. He had on black leather booths with two belts wrapped around his right leg. Matt's favorite feature of his new found character was a toss up between the green mask that covered his mouth and the waist-cape that was shredded at the bottom.

He smelled as if he had been traveling through the woods for days. All at once the silence in the woods ended as a laser beam shot right by his head, letting off a glowing hot blue light. From the distance metallic grunting could be heard from left and right. "Oh yeah, this just keeps getting better and better." He rolled his eyes and began running for his life.

**It** was day one inthe Kingdom of Siah

Kari awoke from what could be noted as one of the most dreadful slumbers she had ever had. She was laying on a cement floor in the middle of a drafty, wet dungeon. Standing up she looked around at the rotting prison cells and noted the smell of moldy food, she couldn't help notice all the people who were yelling at her. A maid immediately rushed to her side. "Princess Vivian, are you all right?" She huffed. "What are you doing in your dungeon?"

"_My _dungeon?" Kari repeated. "Vivian? _Princess _Vivian?!"

"You're still with fever, I fear." The maid stated with concern. "Well, follow me to your chamber."

Kari followed the woman curiously and repeated. "My chamber...?" Kari hesitantly followed the maid up the cracking cement staircase leading them into a red hallway. The halls had many portraits of people she had obviously never heard of before and yet male or female, they all looked like her. Just then someone grasped onto her arm and stopped her in her tracks. "Daughter! How are we feeling this day?" came a jolly booming voice.

"Umm...father?" she took a guess.

He smiled. "Yes?"

She sighed of relief and pointed to the servant who was dragging her to her chamber "She told me I wasn't feeling well and that I should go to my chamber"

He was now turning to the maid holding Kari's arm "Megera," he said sternly "Do not make my daughter do things she doesn't feel she wants to do."

"No, no. It's fine" Kari protested. "I'd like to see my room."

"Pardon?" her father asked.

"Uhh. I said, I'm sick from, oncoming doom!!"

"Well then, off to bed with you."

Kari and her maid continued on their hideously long walk down the hideously long hallway and finally ended at a large oak door. Megera pushed it open to reveal Kari's gigantic teal colored room. Her closet was nine feet across and the handles were woodcarvings of a woman's head, presumably her mother. Her bed was even bigger than the closet and was a lighter color green than the walls. Her bedroom in this fictitious world was actually larger than her whole apartment in Odaiba!

She looked over inside her closet, which only held two outfits. One was a copy of what she was wearing currently and under her menu was listed as ROYAL ARMOR. It was a pink dress; long mesh sleeves and golden boots with pink bows on them. She raised her eyebrow and looked at the second outfit listed under ADVENTURE ARMOR. It was a dark pink fabric that covered only her breasts, the rest of her torso was covered by a see-through light pink mesh material that draped down passed her dark pink skirt, which came down a few inches above the knee. Her arms were covered in criss-crossing white material. The outfit finished off with yellow leather boots.

Kari felt a smirk come across her face as she selected to wear the adventure outfit, but she kept her golden boots.

**It** was day one in the Desert of Zebien.

Sora opened her eyes, which was met with the bright light of the sun hot sun. She closed her eyes and sat up, after shading her face she reopened her eyes. She stood from the sandy desert, sweating profusely.

She looked down at her outfit and felt no better about her character. "So I'm a nomad, but I'm a nomad with style... that doesn't make anything better!" Dressed in little to nothing, Sora had light pink armbands starting at her elbows, tied to her with cherry red lace winding in and out of the fabric. The same fabric covered her breasts as on her arms, they led down to a triangular point to her belly button, leaving the rest of her torso exposed. She was wearing a skirt with a large fabric belt and below was the pink skirt. The only thing about this outfit she was grateful for were the large blue boots hiking up to her knees that were protecting her feet from the burning sand.

She took a break from her appearance and around for a sign, a horse, donkey, tree, fire breathing dragon, anything!!

"Sand. There's lot's of sand..." she sighed "Great." She started searching through her tan travelers bag for a map. "Please be a map, please be a" she tore through the bag and disappointedly stated "No map."

She rolled her eyes and then regained some hope that her luck would change when she spotted a water canteen inside the bag. She scooped it up and only continued to be disappointed after attempting to poor out the evaporated liquid. She sat back down in the blazing sand and said to no one: "That's just peachy."

**It** was day one in the Kingdom of Crious.

Tai woke up in an average Inn that you'd see in a video game. Three beds surrounded his with three strange looking monsters sleeping in them. Why anyone would want to have a monster as their customer was beyond him, because if you were the bellhop and you ticked the monsters off... well they would have no mercy.

Tai shuddered as he thought of his surroundings, what if they were all monsters? What if he was in a monster town? He stood up from his bed and automatically yawned, stretching his arms up in the air, and saluted to no one in particular. "Well, that was creepy." He whispered.

The clash of his armor caught his attention as he looked down at his outfit. "Who sleeps in armor?!" He mused. He looked just like the knights in the games, cheesy 1300's armor, big sword in a holster which looked too big to carry but probably wasn't.

He walked down the stairs and caught sight of a cloaked man paying the woman at the register. Thank goodness, a human! Tai then felt shivers flow through his whole body as the cloaked man looked at the stairwell and smirked evilly at Tai. "Should I know him?" Tai asked aloud.

"Hello sir! Did you have a good rest?" asked the woman at the counter.

"Yeah." Tai answered sounding unsure.

She then handed a large envelope to Tai. "You're the soldier from Beonce." She smiled, extending her hand. "Here, this message arrived for you this morn."

He walked up to the desk and took it out of her hands. "Uh, you got a letter opener?"

"Here, this message arrived for you this morn."

"Never mind." He smiled as he ripped it open from the side and took out the letter, which read:

Dear Isaac,

Your service to your King Sebastian is yet again needed.

The princess of our allied kingdom, Zebien, has been abducted and taken to the desert. Zebien's king has requested the presence of all our worthiest knights to find the maiden.

There is a reward included. May you have a safe return,

Sebastian

Tai stood baffled and dumbfounded. He was a knight who was summoned to go find a princess who was captured and taken to a mysterious desert? His friends would think he was pathetic for taking as much joy in this as he did. He then scanned his video game knowledge for what he would need for his journey. He grinned and asked "Um, miss, do you have a map of the world by any chance?"

"Sorry, I just gave this Inn's last copy to that man." She said, pointing to the cloaked man who was leaving. "But there is a shop nearby where you can purchase one."

"Oh. Thanks. Hey, who was that guy?"

"That was Sir. Tanek Gyakutenno. He's a wealthy man visiting from the North."

"Oh. That's nice." Tai shifted uncomfortably. He made a mental note to remember the gentlemen's name. "Say, did you catch him staring at me? Am I supposed to follow him?"

The girl stared blankly and then turned back to Tai smiling. "Hello sir! Did you have a good rest?"

"Um, yeah. You already said that." This was getting more uncomfortable. "But, was I supposed to follow that man? Do you have any information about him?"

"That was Sir. Tanek Gyakutenno. He's a wealthy man visiting from the North."

Tai raised his eyebrow questionably and left the Inn and looked around for a shop

"This is insane! Look, there are people walking around town aimlessly! This really is like a video game." He pointed out to no one.

He wandered around the town for hours before he found the shop. "Stupid houses" he mumbled, "Confuse me will they. Humph. Well, it's the people who are confused in this town. I walked into town's people's homes and none of them care. One of them gave me gold for no reason at all!" he sighed and headed into the shop.

"Hello, do you sell ma-"

"BUY OR SELL!?" the man yelled

"Uhh, well, do you sell maps here?"

"BUY OR SELL!?"

Tai sighed, "Buy."

A huge computerized selection screen popped up in front of Tai, the shopkeeper was nowhere to be found. "The hell?" Tai looked through the screen and pushed his finger up against a map.

The shopkeeper reappeared as the screen disappeared. "100 GOLD!"

"Oh, good thing that guy gave me gold for no reason." Tai snickered and handed the disgruntled man the money. "Thanks for your-"

"BUY OR SELL!?" The man nearly screamed staring blankly at the door. It was incredibly odd how this store had a wide selection of thing's to buy, and yet nothing was featured inside the store besides the angry man behind the wooden desk.

Tai thought it best to leave and not upset the weird shop keep even more. He headed outside the city to a grassy field and pulled out his map. "All right, so...if I'm here and this place is Zebien" he paused "And... I think I need a compass" he sighed as he walked back into the town towards the shop.

**It** was day one in the Forest of Earthen.

Davis woke up in a dusty gray tent, there was snow all over the ground and it was raining. "My leg is freezing!" he said, noticing that his right, yellow pant leg was only half a pant-leg. His left arm was covered in bandages that cut off to a teal fingerless glove. His right arm was much stranger; it was like a slip on glove that reminded Davis of a laser cannon. The letter 'V' was shown thrice on the arm, and instead of an elbow, he had circle with an X in it. "Rad!" he exclaimed as he rushed outside the tent to see a huge Mech in front of him. He looked left and then right before he cowered on the ground covering his head with his hands.

"Dude!" he yelled in fear. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I'm new to this so whatever my character did, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to..." Davis babbled and cowered for a few minutes more before slowly looking up to discover the Mech wasn't even moving.

"Huh." Davis shook and looked back down to the ground. He wanted to know everything about his character before this Mech decided to move and kill him, so he took out his wallet and began his search to know who he is.

"Name: Marth Keeshi, Age: 18." He skimmed the card and then did a double take at his legal to serve alcohol age. "Awesome!" he yelled "Birthplace: Siah. Rank: Mech Pilot... WHOAH!" he looked back up at the Mech and let our a victory cry "YOU'RE MINE, BABY!!!!!!"

He climbed up the leg and went over to the cockpit; he looked for some kind of lever or something to open the door. All he could see was a big red button, Davis thought about the history of big red buttons for a moment, the only thing they seemed to result in were explosions. _But that's only in movies!_ Davis thought to himself before realizing that this was a video game. He pondered this tough decision, to push or not to push. He shrugged and slammed his tan hand onto the button and the door flew open "Alriiiight!!!!" he sat in the bright yellow leather chair and closed the door, locking it. "Now then. How do I work you?"

He looked down on the floor to see a ton of tattered papers, the first thing Davis noticed was a smooth brown cloth with directions on it. Opening it up he saw a big red X and a lot of islands. Davis raised his eyebrow and tossed the cloth back onto the ground. "That would be a lot cooler if I knew where it's supposed to be." Also among the papers lay a two thousand three hundred and twenty-four page Manuel: "How to Pilot a Mech".

"Oh man..." he sighed as he picked up the huge book. _Even video games hate me! _He thought and quickly skimmed his eyes over the pages while flipping them frantically "Awe, forget it. I'll just wing it!" he said as he started mashing various buttons with his palms until he finally found the power button. He then started to label them as he saw what they did.

"Now, we just need a name for you! Now most people name their cars and stuff 'Betsy' but I have an aunt Betsy, so that would just be weird. Hmmm." He scratched the back of his head "How about, SuperDavis? Yeah! I love it cause it's just like me, big, strong and better than T.J!" he said while bobbing his head up and down evilly.

**It** was day one on the Pirate Ship Chikastutso

T.K. woke up in a dingy room that reeked of rum and a fish he couldn't quite put his finger on. He hopped out of a hammock that he imagined was responsible for the rather unpleasant crick in his neck. He looked down at the tattered rags that he imagined were once rather extravagant robes. Lined with gold and silver runes, the cloth draped down past his feet onto the floor behind him. He had a hood adorned with jewels and metals he figured his character might have earned at some point; a good sign. His sleeves hung well past his hands, and there was a long, tarnished gold and crystal staff on the floor next to his unaccommodating bunk. Catching his reflection in the window, he noticed his face more or less unchanged. His eyes and soft features remained untouched by the game's character design engine.

T.K. opened the wooden swinging door into a completely wooden hallway. He then noticed that he was swaying, or was the room swaying? He also heard the sound of someone gasping for air. His first instinct was to find the person and help them. He walked through some more musty rooms before reaching a set of stairs. He started climbing them and then noticed many red splotches on the stairs that looked like blood. He ran up the stairs to see a horrific sight of pirates, dead pirates! So not only was he on a ship with about fifty pirates, but he was on a ship with something that could take _down_ fifty pirates!

He could see one survivor. This guy must have been the one T.K. heard below deck. T.K. ran up to the dying man and held him in his arms. "Richard, we have been attacked by a giant metal demon. Although you are but a traveling Mage upon this ship, it is my dying wish that you take revenge for myself and my crew by becoming captain of the Chikastutso." The man then disappeared and a letter floated above T.K.'s head. T.K. grabbed it and opened it, it was the dying captain's last words.

"I guess I just inherited a ship." T.K. said as he scratched his head and looked around at the now vacant ship.

**It** was January 25th at the Kamiya household, 4:45PM.

"They've been in there for a good half hour." Izzy stated. "We should probably start working on a way to get inside!" Izzy was about to plug his computer into one of the slots in the console, when Tai's mom walked into the room. "Hi kids!" her happy exterior faded into confusion and shock when she spotted the children who were in big bubble-like objects. "What's going on!?"

Yolei could feel the sweat forming on her head. "I _would_ explain it but I wouldn't want to steal Cody's thunder!"

"They're...they're!" Cody looked around the room in a panic "Joe knows! Don't you Joe?"

"Uhh, yeah, but... I... Um, I have to use the restroom!" Joe said, running down the hall.

Izzy sighed. "Their playing the newest model video-game. Everything's fine. It's just virtual reality, nobody's in any danger. I'm managing everything from outside."

"Oh." Her face returned to it's happy state. "Well, you'll have to get them out, T.K has a phone call!"

"I'll take it for him!" Izzy walked down the stairs and picked up the phone. "Hello?"

"EH...T.K?"

"No, this is Izzy Izumi."

"Oh, why isn't it T.K?"

"T.K's um..." Izzy looked frantically around the room for some kind of excuse. "He's, um, he's just, at the park!"

"But Mrs. Kamiya said he was there..."

"Yeah. Heh, heh. He just left and he can't come home either... because, um... he's sleeping over!" Three hurrahs for quick excuses. "If he can, he can right? Pleeease!"

"Absolutely, I'll come by and bring his things!"

Izzy smiled nervously. "Wonderful!" He hung up the phone and ran back into Tai's room. "Hey guys, T.K's mom thinks he's sleeping over, so she's bringing his stuff and what do we do now!?"

"I don't know, I don't know! You're the smart one!" Joe said frantically.

"Why can't _we_ just take his stuff?" Cody asked.

"We can!" Izzy grasped onto Cody's shoulders and started shaking him. "We can!!! YOU'VE SAVED US ALL!"

Izzy ran downstairs, waiting for T.K's mom to show up, while Cody stood bug-eyed in Tai's room. "Joe? Was it just me or was that was a little..." Cody thought "Hysterical."

"Izzy gets kind of, excited, when he's under pressure" Joe shrugged.

Yolei laughed, "Kind of like you, Mr. Potty pants!"

"Hey" Joe said defensively "I really did have to use the Restroom, with perfect timing might I add!"

Twenty minutes later, T.K's mom showed up. Izzy greeted her at the door.

"Hi!" She said "Well," she handed Izzy three duffel bags and a backpack "Here's all his stuff!"

"Um, he's only staying for the day you know."

"Yes and here are his things. Can I see him, do you think? I waited a while before coming so he would be home from the park so I could kiss him goodbye."

"Uhh...they're, he's, they're um, they're in the Digital world!!!" Izzy blurted out.

She sighed heavily. "That boy's in big trouble! He told me he'd mention when he went to the Digital world, I would have brought snacks! There would have been snacks!!!"

"That sounds wonderful, but, well, it was important because, Mrs. Kamiya was on the phone and...And it's um, Patamon's birthday!"

"Darn. That's all the more reason to have brought snacks! Oh well..." she sighed, "That explains why Patamon isn't at home. Well you tell him when he gets out to call me?"

"I will. Bye." He closed the door and sighed, "Wait a second..." he dragged the bags back to Tai's room.

"Camping trip?" Joe asked staring at the three duffle bags.

"You'd think that!" Izzy said, dropping the bags "Hey, did T.K bring Patamon?"

The three others looked half-heartedly around the room. "No" Yolei rose her eyebrow "Why?"

"Oh." Izzy scratched his nose "Ms Takaishi said Patamon wasn't at home. I should make a mental note to tell T.K he's lost his Digimon."

"No he hasn't!" a squeaky voice said.

"Patamon!" yelled the three in union.

Patamon popped out of one of the duffel bags, gasping for air. "I snuck in while T.K's mom wasn't looking. I didn't know she'd be packing his socks and underwear in that bag, though."

"That's all T.K's socks and underwear?" Cody asked in amusement.

"Nope" Patamon bounced onto the floor and ran over to the bubble like mold that T.K was in. "Some of them are still at his house. Um, what are you guys doing to T.K and Matt, and Kari." Patamon looked at Izzy with a 'I knew it all along' look on his face "Izzy, are you a mad scientist?!"

"What?" Izzy laughed. "No. This is just a video game, I won't bore you with the details just yet, but I will tell you that a whole universe may lie in the balance of the game. And now if you don't mind, I have to find a way into it" Izzy said, finally getting his Laptop plugged in.


	3. Chapter 3

**CHAPTER THREE**

**Two Quarters**

Meanwhile somewhere in **Ruelah**, Ken was in his operations room leading his troops into battle. "Sir Wedge, Sir! What's our next move!?" a soldier shouted obnoxiously into Ken's ear.

Ken stood up from his metal chair, it seemed the whole building was just like his room, metal and uncomfortable. It was a rather annoying quality of this building, considering every time he would catch a glimpse of his character in the reflection he'd scare himself half to death. Funny how he was once the heartless emperor of the Digimon and that sat well with him and yet now here he was leading troops to battle and found it highly uncomfortable. "Hm?" he looked back at the screens, which were all focused on what appeared to be a ninja. "Is this who we're chasing?" he asked.

"Yes sir, have you forgotten?"

"Uhh." Ken looked around at all the controls. "No... just... just keepin' ya on your toes!"

"My... toes, sir?"

"Nothing. Never mind" Ken shook his head. "Refresh my mind, why are we chasing him?"

"He's wanted in six kingdoms, Sir Wedge!"

"For what?" Ken asked.

"Regicide!" one of the cyborgs answered.

"Regicide!? In six kingdoms? Why would he kill six rulers?"

"Sir, that's why we are trying to catch him, Sir!"

"Did he steal anything from the castles?" Ken asked.

The cyborg shook his head. "Only once, sir."

"Hm. So he killed a bunch of royalty and took off without taking anything? Sounds like revenge."

"Or he's just a maniac, sir!"

Ken pushed a few buttons and closed up on the guy they were chasing. "Can we get any closer than this?"

A cyborg saluted Ken and started pushing various buttons "Yes, sir!" after the cyborg stopped typing, a holographic image of the man they were chasing appeared in front of Ken. "Sir, intelligence indicates that he has been outfitted with standard ninja gear. We also have this footage from two years ago." A few more buttons and a holographic movie was playing in front of Ken which featured the ninja freezing one of his swords and slashing it through one of Ken's former Cyborg members, each crystal ice shard stabbing into the circuits of the cyborg. "He is a professional Cyborg killer. A danger to society."

**It** was day one in the dusk of DAY TWO, somewhere North of Jezaiba.

Matt had been running for hours now, he had finally found some kind of hideaway when he ran into an under ground sewage tunnel to escape from the Cyborgs who were so intent on chasing him. "What am I even being chased for!? ... and what's that smell?" he plugged his nose with his fingers and looked around at the dead rats and waste that he was literally swimming in.

"Oh, isn't that just pleasant. Okay, okay... I gotta get my mind off this...umm" he then found his hand covered with only god knows what and shuddered. "And how would I do that..? Oh, I know!" Matt cleared his throat and started to sing his most popular song. "I turn around I can see what's behind me, I turn back around-"

Outside of the cave walls where the tunnel was buried under, Tai was trying to find his way to Zebien. "Man, this is harder than I thought! How do people read these maps?" Tai sighed. "And this stupid compass, it's made of wood, the _whole_ thing is made of wood! EVEN THE NEEDLE!!" He stopped his train of thought when he heard singing coming from his right. "What the..."

"You can't take nothin' for granted! you've got to live life today! ...oh man, how long can I sing the same song for? It's just getting so repetitive. I know, I'll sing one of my other songs ...uhh...uhh... Why did they let me only write the one!???"

Tai walked a safe distance from the talking wall and kept listening.

"Oh wait, there is that one song they let me write." Matt thought about this decision for a few more seconds. "Then again it's called; 'The girl by the Laundromat' and I'm not to keen on singing it...but nobody's here anyways, except for the killer cyborgs that are after me, but they're most likely tone-deaf. So here goes nothing 'There was this giiiirl! she was by the lauuuuuuundromat!!"

Tai began to laugh while the song continued, yet he was completely baffled. Using the oddball song as background music, Tai fiddled around with the items in his bag, throwing his useless compass at the cave wall. The tunnel that Matt was crawling in suddenly began to vibrate, causing him a massive headache. "Grr. Stupid cyborgs!!" Matt continued to sing, louder this time to spite the 'Cyborgs'.

Tai remembered the song, and decided to sing along "She had seven toweeelllss! And eight shiiiiirts! She told meee, she couldn't afford a washing machinnnnneee!!!!"

Inside the tunnel, Matt began to get all twitchy, considering some one knew his song. His voice got a little crackly but still he continued, "I handed her two quatreeeerss..." he waited.

Outside, Tai still followed along "But she said it costs foooour!!!"

"AHHHHHHHHHH! Who's saying that!?" Matt jumped, accidentally hitting his head on the muddy walls.

"I'm..." Tai remembered what the King's note had read his name was; "Isaac"

"Oh, I'm Matt." Matt said, seeing as how he didn't know his alias yet.

_Matt? _Tai thought to himself _Oh no...He's a wall...!_

Matt sighed and tapped the wall. "Hey can you do me a favor?"

"Uhh, sure."

"Are there any cyborgs around that area?"

"Cyborgs?" Tai repeated "Um. No, they aren't from this time are they?"

"This time?" Matt raised his eyebrow "Oh, hey! How did you know the lyrics to my song?" More sewage was flooding into the tunnel in great splashing waves, making it hard for Tai to hear what Matt was saying. Fed up, Matt took a bomb off his belt and placed it near the wall. "I'm definitely not a conventional ninja!" he lit the bomb and swam under the glop.

When it exploded the wall blew off, covering Matt and Tai both with sewage and rocks in addition to knocking them both unconscious.

**It** was day two and Matt and Tai were in an unknown location

They both awoke in comfy-checkered blankets in a room at an Inn. Tai looked to his right, hoping not to find a monster in the bed next to him. Instead of a monster this time, next to him was a ninja, equip with absolutely nothing, but still a really cool ninja none-the-less. The blonde ninja opened his blue eyes and rose from the bed. He stood and stretched his arms up while yawning, then he jumped up and kicked one of his leg's out while in mid-air for two minutes before returning to the ground and giving a peace sign to no one in particular.

Both of the boys stood in the room, staring at each other for ten minutes trying to figure things out. Just then a young girl, roughly the age of eight walked into the room.

"Hello!" he smiled, tossing her green hair behind her shoulders.

"Um, hi." Matt said. "Who are you?"

"Oh, my names Maryn, I saved you guys!"

"You?" Tai repeated.

She nodded "Yeah! Me and my carriage brought you back here to Zebien!"

"ZEBIEN!" Tai shouted "Thanks! What do I owe you?"

"Well I usually only charge conscience people for rides. Teehee!" she giggled.

"Thank you for all your help." Tai picked up his sword off of the ground and stood in the doorway. "But now I have to go see the king, can you tell me where the castle is?"

"Silly soldier!" she giggled. "You mustn't go see him smelling like that. Both of you smell of sewers."

"Hey," Matt said, "Where did you find us?"

"Near Cave-Yuda. The sewage pipe seemed to have blown up. Now excuse me, I'll go run the two of you a bath!" she walked out of the room, and Matt and Tai once again looked at each other accusingly.

"How did you know my song!?" Matt asked.

"Matt, it's me: Tai."

Matt raised an eyebrow and bit his bottom lip. The knight standing before him could be a decoy, a computer player that had stolen Tai's data. So it might just be better to test him.

"Oh yeah? Then what's my real name!?"

Tai sighed. "Matt. I already said that."

"Oh yeah..." Matt thought for a moment "What's my last name?"

"Ishida"

Matt raised his eyebrows. "What's my brothers last name?"

"But you hate it when I call T.K by your moms last name!"

"Well, that's good enough for me!" The two hesitated before speaking again. "Tai?"

"Yeah?"

Matt thought about the last days events, running from the cyborgs, the overgrown rabbit with poison fangs and the treacherous muck he had to swim in. "IT WAS AWFUL!"

"I tell you what was awful, that song you were singing in the sewer!" Tai laughed.

Matt shrugged "Hey, you remembered the lyrics to it and you didn't have to sing it, so there must be something memorable about it!"

"I guess. So, why _were_ you in the sewer?"

"I was being chased by Cyborgs and I had to get away so I ran into the sewer."

"Cyborgs? Why were there cyborgs when I'm a knight and you're a ninja?"

"I don't know, why did I have a bomb attached to my belt when ninja's are supposed to use swords and stuff. Awe man!" Matt looked down at his empty belt. "I lost all of my weapons in the explosion... I guess I'll have to go to a shop or something."

Tai burst out laughing and pointing at Matt. "GOOD LUCK!"

"Boys! The bath is ready!" said Maryn.

"Hey, it is two bath's, right?" Tai asked looking somewhat disgusted at the thought of Matt's nude body.

"I'm sorry, we only have one bath" she winced.

"You only have one bath?" Tai asked.

"Yes."

"In an Inn?" Tai now asked looking puzzled.

"Yes." Maryn repeated.

Tai raised his finger instructing her to stop speaking and he said: "At an Inn where you have tons of people stay and only one bath?"

"Yes, sir!" she smiled.

"That's disgusting!!" Tai responded.

Matt wiped the sweat forming on his forehead and said: "Uhh, tell you what. I'll just let Mr. Knighty here take the bath, he is after all going to see the king and I am, after all, probably going back in the sewer."

"What are you talking about?" Tai asked, "We have to stick together now that we know who we are!"

"Alright" Matt now began to whisper and pull Tai to the corner of the room. "I have to tell you something though, while looking through my bag I found a list with king names on it"

"Yeah, so?" Tai whispered back.

Matt winced "The names were crossed out."

"Yes" An eavesdropping Maryn interrupted the boys conversation. "You are quit lucky that we don't turn you in...but business is business at our Inn!"

"Huh?" Both boys grunted in unison.

Maryn pointed on the wall at a wanted posted with Matt's picture on it "Ring a bell?"

"No actually..." Matt said with a quiver in his voice "But I'm sure that's not good."

**It** was day two in the Desert of Zebien and Sora was weakly thrashing her way through the desert trying to find some way out of it, and find some signs of civilization. It had been twenty-five hours since she woke up in the terrible desert, she could only assume she had walked in circles a million times by now. She hadn't stopped walking all night, her legs felt of jelly and her stomach was crying for nourishment. Exhausted and incredibly dizzy from the suns heat, she collapsed near a sign that read: "Zebien" and looked up to see a cloaked figure.

"Would you like to get out of this scorching hot desert?" the man asked, reaching his hand to hers.

She grabbed it and stood herself up "Yes, sir." There was another cloaked figure in the distance, crying. Sora couldn't see her, in fact the cloaked woman was completely blurred to Sora's dizzy sight, but Sora could tell she was crying.

The man picked Sora up and placed her on thin air, which soon became a black chariot with a black horse pulling it. Sora was too tired to be frightened, instead she weakly spoke; "What's your name?"

"Tanek." He smiled and snapped his finger. Instantly the blurry woman from before was sitting across from Sora. Her eyes were glowing a pale purple, she offered a smile that vanished as quickly as it came. "You'll be alright now" the woman whispered.

Tanek, Kanzas and Sora arrived at a huge black castle, the kind you'd only see in horror or suspense movie's, with the frightening gargoyles that kinda pop out at you from no where and weird servants who don't say much. "Just like the ones from the movies..." Sora said to herself. It had tall black towers attached to it and vast amounts of hallways. The drawbridge lowered with an echoing creek, Sora looked over the edge of the bridge at the black waters below, a water creature she couldn't identify jumped out and back into the water with a splash.

"Mm.." Tanek took her hand and dragged her to into the castle. He had signaled for Kanzas to leave the room and then looked Sora in the eyes. "I'm aware you're a real player."

"Are you the one who sent the letter?" Sora asked.

"Are _you_ aware of the role you play?" Tanek asked as Sora shook her head.

**  
**"You play the role of damsel in distress. So that would make me..." he smiled. Sora looked at her surroundings and then looked at Tanek, the cloaked boy with a sword in hand. "So that makes you.." she repeated.

"Your captor.."

**It** was day two on the Pirate Ship Chikastutso andT.K wandered through his newfound pirate ship. He was fascinated that his character ended up being the mage as that was always his favorite video game characters; more than enthused, he was frightened that something killed all of his former crewmates.

The boat had been stagnant for some time now. Even in character, T.K. was no navigator. He had been attempting to steer for hours now. As his mind slowly gave up on the idea of the ship moving, T.K. headed downstairs and began looking through all the rooms below. After opening various chests and pocketing various potions, T.K. rested himself in a hammock. "Man, being a pirate is exhausting!" He then wiped his sweating forehead. The entire white garb he was wearing was really heavy and hot. "Oh hey, if I'm a mage, then I must have magical powers!"

He extended his hand and opened his palm: "FIRE!" he yelled.

Nothing.

"Um, okay." He then put both of his hands together and moved them into a dramatic position. "Alakazam!"

Nothing.

T.K. scratched his head. "This is just as exhausting as trying to make this ship move!" Video games were so much easier, he could just see a list of what moves he had and select them.

"T.K!" came a shrill voice, wispy in the distance.

If T.K. had a mirror he was sure that his face was pure white right now. "Um. Look, I don't know who you are but the Captain said that this ship was mine now..." T.K. paused "Oh hey! Maybe you can help me figure out how to move the ship!"

"T.K!" the shrill voice yelled again "Use your staff, T.K!"

"My...oh! My staff!" T.K. picked up his staff and all of the sudden it began glowing and a see through menu popped up "Steer. Unlock. Cure. Revive. Antidote." Were the options. "STEER!" He yelled and poked the selection with his staff. T.K. felt a shift and smiled happily as the ship began to move. Now another selection popped up, NORTH. SOUTH. EAST. WEST. T.K chose south.

"Thanks so much for the advice, voice from the abyss!" He smiled.

"You're very welcome T.K, now would you please get me out of this chest?!"

"What? Where...where are you?" T.K called. He followed the voice into a room far, far in the bottom of the ship. He unlocked the door with his staff and low and behold was piles and piles of gold, gold statues and treasure chests! "Little voice?" He asked.

"Over here!" It squeaked.

T.K. followed the voice to a very, very tiny silver chest and opened it with his staff. "PATAMON!!" T.K. yelled. "Patamon, are you okay!?"

Patamon blinked and got out of T.K's grasp "T.K!"

"Patamon, how did you get here?!"

"Izzy sent me in here through his Laptop. He said if sending me in here works that I should contact him as soon as possible!" said Patamon

"We've been here a full day now, and we've found no way to communicate." T.K. winced. "We'll keep up the search though..."

**It** was day January 25th, 8:10PM at the Kamiya household whileIzzy, Yolei, Joe, and Cody waited for Patamon's response. "I hope that worked" Izzy said, staring at his laptop. There was a worried tension in the air as Joe dangled his car-keys back and forth, just listening to them clink together. He finally snapped and yelled, "What if you just vaporized Patamon?!" Joe screamed "What if you just VAPORIZED him!?!?"

"Shut up" Izzy said flinching "Shut up! I didn't vaporize anyone it should just take a while for his response."

"What if he landed in the middle of a desert?" Cody asked

"Yeah" Joe said "Or in front of a bullet!? A BULLET!"

"You guys! We should take on a more positive approach!" Yolei yelled.

Cody circled the Masterbox "I wonder what would happen if we just turned it off while their playing it"

"Well, they have no pupils." Joe stated.

"A erupt stopping on their game play could blind them" Izzy said.

"Or kill them" Joe said.

"How could that kill them?" Izzy asked.

"Well, what if the wires are attached to their brains some how or something?"

Izzy sighed, "I have a big hunch that we shouldn't turn off the game. I think for now I'll just try and hack into their item sub screen, give them more items and etcetera."

"That gives me an idea!" Cody shouted, rummaging into T.K.'s main backpack that he brought there himself. "His D-Terminal!"

"What about it?" Izzy asked

"You should try and put it into the game!"

Izzy took the D-Terminal "What do you mean? How would that help?"

"It's a communicator," Cody said, "You wouldn't know because you don't have one"

Izzy slouched down "I do so know. Anyways, we could do that, yes...but what if it gets lost? I'd hate the see the look on T.K.'s face when we tell him we lost his D-Terminal"

"Well, you are the person who said to think positive...right?" Cody remarked


	4. Chapter 4

**CHAPTER FOUR**

**Her Black Bubble**

**It** was day two at the Kingdom of Siah asDavis had taken a break from his tiring role of massacring pirates and stopped into a little town.

"Hm, I'd better buy some parts for SuperDavis..." he said to himself while heading towards the town's local shop.

Outside, Kari was walking peacefully through the charming town and noticed something strange, metal, that could be seen from the top's of the tree's just beyond the town. "Looks like some kind of trouble" she said.

Just then, Davis walked out of the shop grumbling; "What's his problem!? Pushy old dude!" he then directed his attention to Kari, who was merely a pretty girl to him, a pretty girl who was about to get attacked.

"Hey lady!" he yelled "That dudes gonna" before Davis could finished, a black ninja came up behind her and put a katana to her throat. "NOBODY MOVES AND THE PRINCESS LIVES!" he yelled frantically.

"Whoa.." Davis backed up and watched a King come out of the huge castle in front of him. Why wasn't anybody doing anything? After a two-minute deliberation on the matter, Davis figured he was the hero and henceforth, he shall have to save the princess! Davis grabbed a sword out of it's holster on one of the guards that came out with the King and calmly chucked it into the black ninja's head.

"Oh dude..." Davis backed up even more and watched the guy fall onto the ground bleeding and disappearing into nothing. "That's nasty!" He shook at the violent sight and dropped the sword.

To Davis' shock and dismay, all of the townspeople went back to their daily routines, ignoring the brutal slaying that had just occurred, while Kari and the King were staring in awe at him. "Young man" said the king while walking up to Davis. "What is your name?"

"Um" Davis took out his I.D "I'm Marth, I'm from.." Davis glanced back down at his I.D "Here, actually!"

"It's doesn't matter!" the king interrupted "You've just saved my daughter!" he handed Davis 300 gold and began to walk over to Kari.

"Uh... heh heh." Davis squinted and put his hands behind his head. "No problem!"

The town became normal once more, but Kari was still standing there, baffled as ever. "Marth" she said.

"Yeah?"

She ran to him and gave him a hug. "My hero!"

Davis blushed and hugged her back "Um, thanks!"

She got off "Sorry" she giggled "Just playing my part."

Davis nodded pretending to understand. "Okay... anyway, in return I only ask that you point out a shop where the shop keep doesn't totally freak out on me!"

Kari laughed and followed him to his impressive Mech. "That's amazing" she said looking up at it.

"Yeah, that's what I think, too!"

"Do you use it to travel?" she asked.

"You guess it!" He grinned, "That's how I got here."

"What do you travel for?"

"I destroy pirates, I usually just steal their money." Davis monitored Kari's reaction as she quickly backed up from him at hearing this. Davis laughed "Oh, don't worry. I only destroy the bad guys!"

"Oh" She leaned up against the Mech and watched Davis attempting to build a mini-castle out of the dirt he'd been spitting on. "Hey, I was wondering" she said "Where do you travel to?"

"Oh just anywhere." he replied, not looking up from his dirt-castle.

"Do you think you could, I dunno... Take me a few places?" she asked shyly.

Davis took his eyes off the dirt and checked up and down the girl that stood before him. With a trampy outfit like that and still having a kind, sweet personality, and the fact that she was a princess-"How can I say no?" Davis said allowed, "I mean, sure!"

"Thank you!!!" she yelled.

Davis helped Kari into his Mech, desperately trying not to look down her blouse as he pulled her up into the cockpit. He showed her his witty labeled controls and they started moving. It had been hours since they started moving, Davis had told her about the instruction book he "Read" and _"Memorized" _, and continued to tell her about Pirate stories. "So then I slashed at their ship, and it was like; WHAM! And it exploded and then I was like; YEAH! And so then I jumped out of my Mech heroically and stole all of their belongings!" he laughed.

Soon after he finished his story, not long enough for Kari to give him an odd stare, did they hear clanking and a small explosion. "Hey, SD stopped moving.." Davis mused.

"Do you find it hot in here?"

Davis moved in a little closer. "Well baby, I... actually I do!" The two got out of the Mech and saw that it was steaming. "Oh great, two days as a pilot and I already broke it!"

"_Two_ days?" Kari scolded. "What about all those pirate stories?"

"Hey, I can get a lot done in two days!"

"Well" She threw her hands into the air "What do we do now?"

Davis pulled out the novel instruction manual and flipped it to page one. "Page one.."

**It** was day two. Inside of Tanek's Keep there held a very inquisitive Mimi.

"Is Sora okay?" Mimi asked with a worried expression as Tanek walked casually into the room following his brief private conversation with Sora. "Can we make her normal again?"

"It will be difficult, Kanzas." He replied with a solemn glance to the floor. "She is already under the impression that I am some kind of villain despite my best efforts to convince her of the truth. She believes I have kidnapped her, as her character is some kind of princess. She simply disregards any mention of her friends or her true destiny as a warrior of light as gibberish. She truly believes herself to be a character from this world."

"Oh no..." Mimi sobbed as she sunk to her knees shedding tear after tear for her friend. Surely she would remember Mimi if she had a chance to talk to her! It had to be worth a shot, right?

"I want to talk to her." Mimi requested with a suddenly determined glare.

There was no way Sora could really forget her. No brainwashing or evil could cloud true friendship, and Sora's love for her friends was unrivaled by anyone, even that really clingy Ken kid! The crest of Love was hers, after all.

"No, I cannot allow that." Tanek said sternly. "Even if she does remember you mentally, a program would kick in upon seeing a warrior of light that would force her body to fight you to the death. Please, just trust me to deprogram her over time." He persuaded, hoping to curb this dangerous line of thought that Mimi had been following. "She did not attack you earlier because it was only thirty minutes ago that Zander uploaded the program, so I'm afraid my original plan to have you break the spell on the warriors of light must be cast aside."

A black wind called by Mimi's outrage at the situation began kicking up her cloak and running through her hair. This wasn't fair at all! Whoever this Zander jerk was, he was incredibly cruel.

"Fine..." She submitted as the wind died down. She wasn't about to put Sora's life or mental stability in any more danger than they already was.

"Good girl." Tanek said with a sense of finality.

"Now then, on to happier news." He chuckled with a sympathetic smile. "I have found another one of your friends, Kanzas. T.K, I believe his name is. He is a weaver of the light in this world. A white mage, we call them. However, he has fallen in with a band of pirates and become one of them." he explained with mock excitement lacing his every word.

"I want you to take the ship I had constructed for you in Ruelah, the cyborg lands, and capture him. The ship is called The Silver Rose, and it's a technological masterpiece. T.K's pirate friends should pose no threat to it." He assured. "Now then, it's docked at the beach a few miles west. Take the chariot to it. The crew knows where he is and how to run the ship. I only need you there as captain. Come back safe..." He finished worriedly as he gestured to the door and turned to his own chambers. It was all too easy, really.

"Okay!" She said with renewed vigor.

One more friend to save, and one less evil minion under Zander's control. She was absolutely amazed that T.K would allow himself to be under any sort of dark rule. She figured he would sooner... No, she wouldn't think about it. She had too much to do and just enough time to do it. As she turned to leave the dreary castle, she looked about at the frightening gargoyles and tall, dark, twisted spires. The castle was in almost every way where she imagined every evil wizard she'd ever heard of would live.

"Tanek doesn't have very good taste..." Mimi mumbled to nobody in particular. "I wonder if he'll let me redecorate this place later. I wouldn't be surprised if Sora only thought he was evil because of how gloomy everything looks."

She sighed. Looking at herself in a mirror as she passed by one, she chuckled slightly. "Then again, even I look pretty dark in this outfit. Maybe he just wants to scare off people that are out to get him..."

**It** was day twoin the Kingdom of Zebien and Tai called for Matt from the distance.

Matt looked up from his over priced items he bought at the Item Shop and looked over at Tai. "Hey…you been to a shop yet?"

"Yeah, scary, isn't it?"

"What's his problem?" Matt said laughing, referring to the shop keep. "So anyway, what are you doing here? Finish you bath?"

"Yeah. I came to find you... and some good food!"

Matt rolled his eyes. "It figures."

"I was told that if we go to the castle we could get free food and they're expecting me! So it's like hitting two Birdramon with one stone!"

"Hold up!" Matt stopped in his tracks "I'm not going to the CASTLE with you!"

"Wha? Why not?"

"I'm wanted … for regicide!" Matt pulled out a list from his pocket "And plus, the King of Zebien is next on this list!"

"No problem! We just need to get you some new threads!" Tai grinned as he dragged Matt into the nearest … Tai stopped in his tracks and looked around town. "Hey, have you noticed..?"

"Yeah, there are no clothing shops."

"All they sell are adventure items." Tai sighed and looked around at a town house "And you know what that means...!"

"Tai … I'm _not_ going to break into someone's house just to steal clothes"

"No, no! They won't even care! You can just walk right into their houses."

Matt raised his eyebrows and started walking towards the castle. "I'll just wait outside and look busy"

"Yeah, you look real busy in your stinky ninja clothes..." Tai opened the gate to the castle and winked. "I'll be right back!"

"_Yeah you look real busy in your stinky ninja clothes_" Matt repeated mockingly as he watched Tai approach the door. "Humph. Maybe if I walk around in circles until Tai comes back out I'll fit in here." He mumbled.

Tai was greeted by the guards at the door and taken into the King's throne room, he knelt down before the king and gave a solute.

"Sir. Isaac, you have come here request of the king of Zebien!" shouted an annoying guard.

"Our princess has been captured, we have had rumor that she was taken to a desert, but that was day's ago. Her current whereabouts are unknown. There is a new Blacksmith, you should look him up, he lives in Halacab just north of this landscape, he's young, but he has already created a sword better than the Masamune, Excalibur, Ultimaweapon, Master Sword, Ragnarock, and countless others. I am sure it will guide you on your journey if you can find it. If you have heard, there _is_ a reward of the princess' hand in marriage. Sir. Isaac, will you find her for us?"

"Yes sir!" Tai shouted immaturely. "Do you have any clues or hints, as of her whereabouts?"

"The east desert. That is all I can tell you"

Tai saluted the king once more before exiting the castle. He found Matt outside walking in the gardens.

"So how did it go?" Matt asked

"Great! We have to go find a Princess who is lost somewhere in the desert, isn't this cool?!"

"Wait, wait, wait…WE?"

"He even gave me some Gold to go and get armor."

Matt and Tai both looked at the shop and then back at each other. "Oh man…"

**It** was day two in the Kingdom of Ruelah.

"Sir! I bring news of the convict!!" shouted one of Ken's follower-Cyborgs

"Yes?" Ken asked calmly "Did you find him?"

"No, sir."

"Then what's the news?"

The Cyborg shouted; "That…we haven't found him yet!"

"This is stupid! He's wanted, right?"

"Yes, sir."

"And you guy's can't find him, right?"

"Um, yes, Sir."

"Then" Ken finished polishing his arm "I'll do it myself!!"

"Yes, sir!"

**It** was day two on the Pirate Ship Chikastutso and T.K was bored and confused. There was really no other way to put it. Patamon had fallen asleep an hour ago, and T.K had taken the time to try reviving every pirate he could find. However, every time he would approach one of them he would simply find a healing potion or a few hundred gold on the ground next to them and they would vanish into thin air.

After twenty minutes of crying in their memory, T.K decided to explore the treasury for anything that might be useful. He might not have been big on video gaming, but he knew the word treasury was a good thing in pretty much any universe.

Although the treasury was indeed filled with all sorts of...well...treasure, T.K noticed he couldn't actually pocket any of it for himself. He was simply incapable of it. He could pick it up and put it into his bag, but it would simply reappear in the treasure pile. Occasionally, though, specific items from the pile would stay in his bag such as a nice looking pair of lady's gloves, a few piles of gold, a necklace, two helmets, three swords, ten potions, a roll up tent, and an entire suit of armor.

For one reason or another, these were all perfectly capable of fitting in his bag. What was more confusing than that to T.K was why he attempted to place them in his bag in the first place, and he eventually decided to leave the treasury because it was officially freaking him out.

So there he sat on the deck, watching the waves roll by and heading south for whatever reason as he occasionally checked on Patamon to make sure he didn't go flying overboard or something. His mind wandered to the others momentarily, and he found himself drifting off to sleep once he got to Davis.

As his eyes began to close, he smiled slightly at the sheer craziness of a plasma cannon blowing the crow's nest to kingdom come. What a strange dream he was having. It was a little painful for a dream, though, what with that wooden board that fell and cracked his arm as funny little red numbers appeared above his head. What was that screaming noise, anyways?

"Sweet Coney Carbuncle!" T.K cursed as he snapped to his senses and wondered briefly what on earth he had just yelled that for.

The ship was under attack by something, and now his arm was broken.

"Patamon!" He called in a panic as he scrambled to find his staff and heal his arm. Praying he didn't vanish like the pirates he had attempted to heal, T.K opened the menu and selected Cure from the list; selecting himself as the target. A white light wrapped itself around his arm and he felt his bone slipping back into place and mending itself.

Patamon, as it turned out, was the screaming noise. He had begun wildly flying about screaming for T.K as soon as the enemy ship fired on them. Speaking of the enemy ship, T.K figured he had better asses the situation before he planned his counter attack strategy. When the simple action of turning his head was performed, however, T.K quickly decided there was a terrible imbalance of technology in this game.

The enemy ship was easily five times the size of his, and appeared to be a solid steel battleship loaded with more guns than a secret agent. A secret agent who was also a cowboy from space with hidden compartments for guns. A space cowboy agent who was in the space army and drove a space tank that also had a lot of guns, and that was on a space ship full of space tanks just like it, which itself was on a bigger space ship full of those smaller ships. T.K noticed he had been thinking about this for a full fifteen seconds, and promptly decided to turn his counter attack strategy into an escape strategy.

"Speed up you hunk of junk! Oh man, there's no spell for that!" He growled in anger while stomping his foot.

"Patamon, where are you?!" He called once again, noticing the screaming had stopped and began worrying for his little orange friend. As he looked about he suddenly realized that Patamon was above him, and fading fast in a very literal sense. Patamon seemed to be drifting in and out of existence.

"Patamon, what's happening to you?!" He yelled.

Patamon tried to respond but his words chipped in and out like bad reception on a cell phone. Finally, Patamon disappeared completely. "Patamon!" T.K yelled to no one. Now was no time to cry, T.K still needed to find a way to escape the crazy battleship attacking him!

Within seconds the Chikastutso took another hit with a loud popping noise and embers of fire threatening to set the whole ship on fire. "Hey!" T.K yelled in anger. "What are you trying to hit me for?!"

"For your own good!" Mimi called from her ship. Suddenly Mimi began to glow black and she jerked to the side calling out: "I'm trying to protect this world and _you_ stand in our way!"

Mimi was completely unrecognizable to T.K. as he now began loading the cannons with treasure in any attempt to damage her ship. "I'm just sailing!" He yelled back. "I'm not trying to hurt anybody!"

"Tell that to the slaughtered men on your ship!"

T.K looked behind him and recalled holding that dying pirate and then looked back at the gothic enemy standing before him and his ship. "That wasn't my fault, I don't know what happened, please just let me explain!"

"I wish I could, Richard!" She screamed and fired off another white blaze at the ship. "You'll thank me one day!!"

"You're crazy!" T.K yelled as he took shelter behind some barrels and slammed his fists on the ground. "If only I could fly this ship away, I could get away from her" He whispered.

Just then the Chikastutso grew long orange mechanical wings and took to the bright blue sky. "Jumping Swimmon! We're _flying_!" He laughed as the Chikastutso left the ground, causing the waters to boil and splash onto the enemy ship.

"Tanek never told me that he could fly!" Mimi groaned. "Somebody stop him, he's flying away!" She called to her fellow shipmates. "Can't we fly this boat?"

The soldier began turning some dials. "Yes ma'am, but we're still learning the secrets of this ship. It could be a few moments before we can figure out how to engage flight mode." He quickly made a call to the engine room to 'spread the wings'.

Mimi assumed it was code, although after what she just saw it wouldn't have surprised her if this ship actually had wings.

Mimi looked curiously at the dials, not quite knowing what they were for or why they were just turned. "Fine, fine. As long as we catch up soon." She whispered with impatience, knowing he couldn't hear her and not quite caring.

**It** was January 25th, 8:30PM at the Kamiya household.

"Did it work?!" Yolei squealed with excitement.

"Give me a second, I'm setting up the camera's so we can see where everyone is." Izzy fiddled around with some wires on Tai's new 12-inch monitor. A high-pitched buzzing was heard and the screen slowly appeared. The monitor would give them a choice on which character they would like to watch.

"Roger that!" Izzy exclaimed with great enthusiasm as he typed frantically on his laptop into Unlock's game code. "I have successfully warped Patamon into the game _and_ merged him with T.K's ship. I'm sure he'll be much more useful that way."

"Wait," Joe interrupted "So Patamon isn't going to turn back into Patamon?"

"Nope." Izzy smiled.

"But what if the ship explodes, doesn't that mean Patamon explodes with it?" Joe asked now in somewhat of a panic.

Izzy stared blankly at T.K's part of the screen and blinked a handful of times. "Yes. If T.K doesn't treat that ship right then he could very well lose Patamon forever, considering as of now I don't have a way to bring Patamon back into the real world!"

"What?!" came a collective yell from Joe, Yolei and Cody.

"Yeah" Izzy laughed nervously. "Maybe I should send him a virtual note?"

"Sounds like a good idea" said Cody "Don't you think so, Yolei?"

"Yup!" Yolei grinned, "Don't you think so, Joe?"

Silence.

"Don't you think so, Joe?" Yolei repeated. With no response Yolei turned around from watching Izzy on his computer and looked at Joe, who was staring at Mimi frightened and whose jaw was dropped from here to Hong Kong! "Joe, what's wrong?" She asked as all the children turned to look at Mimi.

"Her... H-h-her ... HELP HER!" Joe yelled and ran up to Mimi. "Izzy, her bubble is black! **Why** is her bubble black?!"

"What?!" Izzy turned from Mimi and looked back to his computer. Hitting a few buttons he brought up Mimi's vitals. "Everything looks normal... I don't understand." He turned back around and walked up to Mimi, who was barely visible through the black swamp infecting her bubble.

"Izzy, fix her!" yelled Cody.

"There's no Manuel on this, okay? Give me some time!" Izzy yelled, beginning to feel the pressure from his friends. "Her vitals are fine, this doesn't make any sense." Izzy clicked the option to watch Mimi on Tai's computer and noticed she was listed under enemy. "Uh oh."

"Uh oh, what uh oh?" Yolei asked walking up to the screen. "Uh oh!" she repeated and the others ran over.

"Look's like we've solved the black bubble mystery..."

**It** was day two in the Desert plane of Zebien.Tai and Matt stood in front of a desert plain in awe and confusion. If they would take a few steps backwards they would be flashed to a sandy road. The two looked around the desert, which only featured mountains of sand for them to look at, then back at their Camel's, which the King of Zebien let them borrow.

"So, left or right?" Tai said with a grin as he mounted the Camel.

"How about forward…"

"Excellent! Onward hoe!" he yelled while hitting the sides of the Camel.

"Yeah.." Matt rolled his eyes "Onward…"

"Come on, man! Have a little more enthusiasm! We're going to go save a princess… a princess!"

Matt pouted as his Camel walked along the forever desert. He looked at his wrist and then back to the furry creatures neck "I missed my gig…"

"Matt?"

"Yeah?"

"You're not wearing a watch…"

"So what!? I always know when I missed a gig... it's in my heart"

"Ooh, that's so romantic!" Tai mocked in a high-pitched voice.

**It** was day two as Davis and Kari sat in unknown whereabouts deciding what to do next."Hey 'Viv?" Davis asked the overly patient, and very beautiful girl that was sitting next to him.

"Yes?"

He sighed and whipped the manual he had been reading for the last few hours at a tree.

"What is it?" she asked

"I don't think..." he looked up at the sky and blushed lightly "I can fix it."

Kari stood up, placing her hands on her hips and tried not to lose her temper…

"**Marth**!"

…and failed

"It's hot! I'm sweating, I've been sitting here for the last two hours patiently as you try and figure out that stupid book and you haven't even offered me a drink! When you're not reading that stupid book you're kicking the sand or looking at my chest!! You won't even talk to me! And on top of that we're hopelessly lost and I'm scared and there could be monsters in this forest and your not equip with **anything** but that piece of _crap_ robot!"

Suddenly Davis, instead of trying to be charming or cool, became full of anger at the thought-to-be sweet girl standing before him. "Hey! Ya'know what? I'm hot too! And I'm sweating, too! I've been sitting here for the past two hours _reading_ this _stupid book_ and I hate reading! I'm so sorry, I don't have a drink for you, if you'd like, _your majesty_, no pun intended, I can go and look for a river for you! When I'm kicking the sand, I'm thinking of something that might help us that isn't in the _forever_ book over there! We're not _hopelessly_ lost, if you think your lost, and you go in one direction, you **will** find something. And do you know why I don't talk to you? .. because I'm trying figure out the _stupid book_ for _**you**_, because I took _**you **_along, and I figured that _**you**_ wouldn't want to be stuck out here in the _hot_, **god-forsaken** forest!!" Davis took a breath and then sighed looking at the ground "And ya'know what? … it's a Mech, ..not a _robot_"

"Marth?"

"Yeah?" he replied in an annoyed tone, still staring at the ground.

"Fix your stupid robot!"

**It** was day two in the desert, or rather, the middle of nowhere. By this timeMatt and Tai had stopped riding on camels some time ago, and were now on foot, traveling into the randomness that was nowhere. Tai Kamiya wiped the sweat off of his forehead and turned to his partner.

"Good going…" Matt pouted.

"What!?"

"You scared the damn camels away!!!" Matt yelled trying not to rip out his hair "Okay Tai, lemme play out a scenario for you. 'Two people are traveling down the desert plains on camels, when they are confronted with five large sandworms. The twosome steady the camels and ride away to safety' … now let me play out _our_ situation.. 'Two people are traveling down the desert plains on camels, when they are confronted with five large sandworms. The one being jumps off his camel, dragging his other, unfortunate partner, off his camel, the first idiot screams "COOL, MAHN!" as the other turns just in time to see both the camels run into the distance, with all of their belongings dragging behind' …" Matt sighed. "Our weapons, food, gold… _everything_!"

"Okay man, I get it. But I'm not the only one to screw up on this little 'mission' of ours."

Matt huffed, "OH? So now everything's my fault?"

"I never said that!" Tai said as he continued to walk, head down towards the sand. "I just said that _I'm_ not that _only_ one to have messed up in here!"

"What have_ I _done?!" Matt argued.

Tai then said, "You've caused **a lot** of trouble, is what you've done! Regicide?! I mean… REGICIDE?"

"Well it's not like I planned on killing a bunch of stupid kings in the first place!"

Tai clenched his fists and raised his head as they walked. "Well it's not like _**I**_ planned on the Camel's running away!"

"Then why'd you get off your Camel!?"

"It's not every day you see SANDWORMS, Matt!!!!"

"All right! THAT'S IT!" Matt clenched his fist and swung a punch. Tai bravely took the punch in the face and then pushed Matt into the sand. "What's that for?!" Matt spewed "Can't fight it out like a man!?"

"No, I could… but" Tai looked up at the black castle before them and gulped. Matt also took a look at the castle. The two then turned their attention to the sand, words were being written in it out of nowhere.

All who have come to oppose Tanek will die.

Rain, nor sun, summoners, nor ninja, knight, nor magic,

Material, nor pause, nor off switch, nor charm, nor any other

Source shall defeat the likes of me.

My advice: Go back where you came from, newcomers.

Matt looked over at Tai as he finished reading. "I don't think she's here!" Tai said sweating profusely.

Matt replied "Yeah, me neither!"

**January** 25th, 6:30PM at the Kamiya household.

Since Izzy had discovered a way to link Tai's monitor to the console and watch his friends as they played through the game. The only downfall in the system was the time difference. Since it was an hour for a day, they were only able to see one "scene" every couple of minutes. Izzy would have to accept the invitation to watch through his laptop. Currently they were watching Ken order around his troops.

"Hey!" Izzy grinned and did a close up on Ken "His character must be a space-bot! And those are is high tech servants! Sent from the high space lords, Zashneb!!"

Joe shivered and looked at the screen "Zashben?"

"Neb, not ben…" Izzy shook his head. Does _anybody_ know what they're talking about these days?

"As long as they stay away from me!" Joe zoomed out and backed away from the computer, taking focus on the console. "Where do you suppose this came from?" he gasped, "You don't suppose the aliens are real, do you?? That they really _did_ send this here so we could save their planet... That this is all real?"

Izzy nodded with excitement, "Yes! I do suppose that is a possibility!! The aliens could have simply taken their minds from their bodies when the cords were connected to their heads and they really _are_ in space right now! It's like an out of body experience!"

"So wait, there's an even bigger chance that they could seriously be ...killed?"


	5. Chapter 5

**CHAPTER FIVE**

**Hacking the World**

Itwas day two in the desert plains of Zebien and Matt and Tai were sleeping peacefully. Keyword, _were_.

Matt rolled over in the sandpit he and Tai had dug. The sky turned dark as soon as they reached a certain point in the desert. If they would go back a couple miles, it would be light again. This world was so shifty. He was hardly asleep, unlike his comrade here who was snoozing like a baby. The pit was about six feet across both ways and took two hours to dig, as there was a sandstorm currently, which had been ongoing for three hours. Both boys buried themselves underneath the sand, minus their heads. The desert was scorching hot, but the sand underground was wet, providing some form of coolness.

"I want more blankets." Tai grumbled in his sleep.

Matt rolled his eyes and turned over so he could see Tai. _You are so stupid_, he thought.

Tai reached his hand over and grabbed some of Matt's sand off of the chest area and packed it onto his own. "Thank you." He snored.

Matt didn't have the time to make a remark as when he looked up, he saw a huge sandworm staring back at him. "UH, TAIII!!!!!!"

Tai opened his eyes "What is it Ma-AHHHH!!! A SANDWORM!"

"YEAH, NO KIDDING!!"

"Oh man! I think this is one hole we're not going to dig out of!" both squirmed to get out of their tightly packed sand beds, after doing so, they ran like hell, only to be stopped by a wall of nothing. Turning around they looked at the sand worm and went into a battle stance.

Matt found that even though he had arms and legs, able to kick and punch with, he could do nothing but block. "CRAP! I can't do anything but block, must be because I don't have weapons!"

The sand worm leaped forward and tackled Matt to the ground, slowly chomping away at his flesh, then followed by ground-pounding him several times. To Matt's shock and dismay, it hardly hurt at all. The letters "96 DAMAGE, 12 HEALTH REMAINING" popped out from the side of Matt's head. "Huh?"

Tai slashed at the sandworm and it fell to bits. After both boys did a victory dance, a blue screen appeared in front of them reading: LEVEL UP! LEARNED: TRIPPLE BLADE ATTACK, LEVEL UP! LEARNED: STEAL MAGIC. NINJA CAN CAST MAGIC."

"AWESOME!" came a raspy scream from Tai.

"Awesome!??? Are you freakin' insane? We almost _**DIED**_!!!!!!"

"You're just jealous 'cause I kicked his ass and you didn't!" Tai chuckled to himself.

"Oh yea?!"

"YEA"

"Well, if you're so great! Beat them" Matt said calmly as he pointed to eight more sand worms that had come up from underground.

Both males exchanged worried glances and went into battle stance. The battle stance soon faded into what both boy's figured would have been a cut scene and marveled at how they could move freely, no waiting for turns. As Tai ran up and slashed at one of the sand worms, he noticed how unlike before there were no signs telling them how much damage had been done, or how much was left, also he noticed how much scarier this thing looked in detail!

In the cut scene it had big stained teeth with green glob's of mucus being drooled and spewed everywhere. For every tooth it had, it had three eyes that, much like the mouth, produced a green colored liquid. The eight tails smacked against the desert sand causing the ground to shake, and each time they would do so, they boy's would fall.

Along with the newly defined detail of the oversized garden worms, Tai also noticed that although there were no numbers to define how much damage he had taken, he was still feeling a lot of pain… and… his duds were a lot cooler now! "Rockin'!!" he screamed when he pulled out his ten times heavier sword. It was encrusted with hundreds of gems and shined like the blazing sun, which seemed less dangerous now that he was facing the worms.

Matt and Tai both struggled with the Sandworms for minutes more, before realizing how utterly hopeless the match was. For every one they actually managed to kill, it seemed as though ten more would appear.

Two sandworms bellowed, once again causing the earth to shake. They both leapt at the boys and used a self-destruct attack. They tossed their combined two thousand pound bodies at the boys sending them through the ground. Matt opened his eyes for what felt like ten minutes after and looked up at the sandworm blinking it's many eyes back at him. The Sand Worm picked up the two in its mouth and tossed them back above ground. Matt noted the black liquid leaking from both himself and Tai, he figured it was the games interpretation of blood.

As it looked like all was lost for the pair, they both looked up and caught the glimpse of a man, only a blur, but a man. It appeared as though he had a gun arm and from it sprayed a thin blue light that soon covered the area of the whole desert, little beads of power no bigger than a dime could be seen within the beam. When the beam hit the sandworm's they disintegrated immediately, along with the cacti, trees, and all the sand. Strangely, it didn't kill Matt or Tai.

Matt and Tai were left huddling on their stomach's with their hands on their heads and they heard footsteps nearing. Tai opened his eyes and took a look up at the…. THE FREAKY CYBORG DUDE COMMING TO KILL THEM!!! "Matt, we need to get up and _run like hell_!"

They stood up and looked at the ground, there was no sand, no rocks, no dirt, just dead land. Beige hard pavement with cracks running from here to Tai's Aunt Betsy's house!

"Tai! That's like those guys who were trying to kill me before! The guys who chased me into that sewer thing!"

"You're under arrest!" Ken aimed his gun arm at them "Put your hands over your head and kneel down!"

"Screw that! Let's run!" Tai yelled, clutching Matt's arm and heading for the hills.

"Hey! You guys can't be so careless! You saw what I just did to this whole desert!"

"Oh crap! He's right… I think we can out run it, how about you?!"

Matt however, was already on the ground with his hands over his head. "Shut up!" he whispered "Are you crazy!?"

Ken saw how Tai wasn't cooperating and decided to show him again the all mighty power of Ichijouji! "Take a look, knight!" He said and fired his gun into the sky, taking out a big chunk of blue sky.

Both boys mouths dropped and Tai collapsed onto the ground, raising his hands faster than Izzy could devour a sardine and feta cheese shake! "_Mommy_…" Tai squeaked under his breath.

"Now then, if you'd kindly accompany me back to jail, you can spend the rest of your lives rotting in a cell"

"Yessir!" Matt and Tai said in union.

"_I'm getting way to used to this_" Ken thought to himself.

**It** was day two and Davis and Kari were still in the middle of nowhere.

"My back hurts!" yelled Davis from the cockpit of his Mech. He had been working for hours trying to fix it, but quickly found the task increasingly difficult without any tools. "It's too bad there's no shop nearby. I'd like to pick up some tools."

"Do you even know how to _use_ tools?" Kari said with a bored tone to her voice.

"I'm not stupid" Davis pouted. "Hey maybe if you'd actually tried to _help _me instead of just sitting there like a bump on a log, we could get some progress going!"

Kari sat stubbornly in the shade for a moment before she realized she was being a bit unfair to Marth. "I'm sorry," she sighed heavily and stood up, wiping off her soft mesh skirt "You're right, I should help you."

"That's more like it!" Davis yelled cheerily.

Kari climbed up into the cockpit with Davis and squished beside him. She began to fiddle with the wires and match them up with the appropriate colors. The Mech seemed worn, like Marth had been using it for years. "How long have you had this, thing?"

"What, Super Davis? I've uh, I've had him since, oh you know, the, the big" Davis fumbled over his words "The big tomatoes shortage in the fall, that year..." He wiped away some sweat and continued trying to fit the parts together. "Yeah, we've had some fun together. The pirates and all, and now look at all the fun we're having." He mumbled with the roll of his eyes.

"Wait..." Kari felt her heart sink with surprise. Did he just day Super Davis? That's what Davis named his toaster back home. "Super Davis?" She repeated, "Where'd you come up with a name like that?" she smirked.

"Well, it was a toughie between some top notch names but Super Davis reminds me of this guy I once knew."

"Oh yeah?" Kari giggled "Tell me about this, _Super Davis_."

Davis then blushed as Kari leaned her curvy body against the wall of the cockpit, resting her arms on one of the screens. "Well," he scratched his head "He's a pretty great guy, there's a lot to say about him. He plays sports. Yeah. Sports with his feet, you've probably never heard of that before, but he's top of his game, nobody can beat 'em. Not even the great Ichijouji" he laughed. "And all of the, uh, _maidens_ in the town really like this Super Davis, but he only has eyes for this one special lady."

"Oh yeah and what makes her so special?" she grinned.

"Lot's of stuff." He nodded "Firstly, she's totally hot!"

Kari furrowed her brows at the slightly sexist comment and hit Davis lightly on the arm.

"But she's nothin' compared to you. Yeah, she couldn't hold a candle to you Viv! I mean, you're so nice and caring and pretty and just a really special girl. Plus I don't have to compete with T.K for your affections!" He said slightly.

"So you're saying that this girl _isn't_ kind, pretty and special?" Kari asked slightly offended.

"Well yeah," he blushed "For Super Davis, but I mean, she's taken."

"Taken?"

Davis grinned "Yeah, she's property of Super Davis!"

"_**Property**_?"

"Yeah! Or whatever those couples are callin' it these days."

Kari moved from the wall and sat back in the cracking leather seat, crossing her arms she said "Yeah, whatever they're calling it..."

**It** was day two in Tanek's Keep and Sora had become restless. "Where is my knight or whatever," Sora whined "Shouldn't I be rescued or something?"

Tanek whipped his cloak around his body and stared blankly at her, he did it for quite some time, which completely spooked her out. To top it off when he sensed her fear he smiled ever so slightly, a kind of creepy, mad scientist smile. "Are you afraid?"

"Wouldn't you be?!" she snapped back.

"Matt… and Tai."

Sora swallowed hard. "Who _are_ you?" He knew their real names, which freaked her out more then the time she heard Gabumon singing oldies hits in the shower! So either Tanek had really good AI and was used to having newcomers or he was somebody in real life that knew them and was using this game as some sick sort of revenge.

"Are they okay?" she asked.

"They came here to save you but then took one look at the tower and decided you weren't here."

"Those idiots!" Great! Who was going to save her now? Her two saviors come to get her, and then chickened out and decided she's _NOT THERE_!? "Well now what? That's not good for me or for you, now I don't get saved and you have no one to fight!"

"You're right. Never fear, it will all fall into place."

"And just what is that supposed to mean?"

"It doesn't matter if they come or not, I'm not looking for a fight, I just want you all out of my world. If they don't find us, we will find them."

"Who is… _us_? Me and you?"

"On the contrary…"

**  
****It** was still day two and somehow, Matt and Tai found themselves in the Kingdom of Ruelah.

Matt and Tai woke up in bunks similar to the ones at the Inn but a lot harder, they both stepped out of the beds and did a little stretch and a peace sign. Matt's arm had been wounded, presumably by the cyborgs, it hurt just like it would in real life. "I feel like a circus freak!" Tai said as he looked around at bars going up and down the room, they were in a prison. To the left was a glowing orb floating in the very corner of the room: a save point. The rest of the room was normal, there was a toilet, a bunk bed and… a …a skull!

"I think circus freaks have it better then we do, Lizard-boy!"

"Hey if I'm lizard-boy what does that make you, the bearded lady?" Tai laughed

Matt rolled his eyes and shook his head as he speculated the room. Annoyed he said: "I'm so glad you can find humor in this situation"

"Hey you started it!"

"That's so not the point right now!"

Tai walked over and kicked the skull across the cell and watched as it shattered against the cement walls, inside was a note written in blood "How original… should we read it?"

"Yeah I guess. You do it!"

"Me, why me?"

"Because you're the one who kicked the skull"

Tai rolled his eyes "You're just scared, scaredy-cat! It's just a game, gees."

"Just a game? Oh yeah I guess this is just a game then" Matt said as he pointed to his wounded arm, trickles of blood seeping through the badly tied up bandage. "Why don't you start taking thing's seriously, Tai? It's not _just a skull_ and I certainly don't think it's _just a game_. Personally, I think it's an alternate universe, just like the Digital World, and just like the Digital World we should be taking it seriously and really trying to help!"

Tai wasn't quite sure what to say. Matt was probably right, he didn't have to freak out about it though. Tai headed over to the skull, which disappeared after he'd smashed it. He picked up the note and read it aloud; "It says, 'Hey you guys, I don't have the hang of this yet, but it looks like Matt could use one of these, good luck!" Tai smiled as a potion appeared in his hands and looked over at Matt; "Signed Izzy!"

**It** was day two on the Pirate Ship Chikastutso and T.K walked around his now water bound ship aimlessly as he reflected on the mad woman who had been so dead-set on attacking him. He had stopped the ship from flying as soon as he got away; it was draining his Magic Power like crazy so now he was back to a normal floating-in-water ship. He could sense a headache coming on from all of the explosions. The waters were glowing with rain. Trees and greenery were everywhere, soaking up the scenery like a sponge. Large flat rocks could be seen peeking out through the waters edge, gorgeous from side to side as the rain pelted down.

The whole world was changed. T.K. called out "Menu!" and hit the Autopilot selection and walked inside of his cabin to shield himself from the waters. His thoughts drifted to his brother, his friends and Kari's whereabouts, if they were okay. He wondered what characters they had gotten and pondered furiously trying to figure out if this new existence was enticing or just exhausting. "Patamon?" T.K spoke sadly, quietly to no one.

The thunder boomed and shook the cabin. It was extremely annoying and hurt T.K's already aching head. Spiders were hiding in every crevice of the creaky wood cabin. Green spiders with extra long mechanical legs. T.K shuddered and squished one with his fist. Immediately his vision turned black and came into vision.

Suddenly that spider was looking much, much **bigger**!

"Whoa!" he yelled and jumped back. "I'm sorry, I really didn't mean to squish you I swear. Twitchy wrists, you understand!"

The words "YOU HAVE ENTERED BATTLE" came onto the screen and in front of the air lay three options.

-ATTACK  
-CAST

-DEFEND

-ITEM

T.K hit the attack selection with his hand in a panic and selected BONK. While readying himself to run up to the beast, T.K was rudely interrupted by a large green goop being shot at him that although looking harmless, hurt quite a bit. It felt like T.K was living smack dab in the middle of the alien-bee-hive Izzy had spoken so creepily of. When it was again T.K's turn to move he felt paralyzed and could not chose to fight. He could see his Health Points dropping like Davis' self esteem after battling Ken on the soccer field!

Just then, the green metal monster began walking up to T.K and looked as though it was about to eat him when suddenly a blue bomb dropped from the sky exploding his enemy into a zillion gooey pieces. T.K fell out of his paralysis and looked up and saw the same battleship from before with the same crazy woman in it. He noticed a slight change, though, in that the battleship was now flying. Eight large thrusters and an uncountable amount of smaller ones were sticking out at different angles from the ship. It was flying.

That was also for chapter 5, a little before the one above.

"Who's side are you on, anyway?!" T.K called from below.

Mimi huffed and paced her ship quickly. "You have to be more careful than that!" Tanek would be very displeased if he learned she had just saved him. Then again, it's not like Tanek wanted him brought back lifeless. Mimi felt oh so very confused. "I saved you!" She cheered.

T.K raised his eyebrow and grabbed his staff. "Yeah, I know!"

"Well," Mimi said as she wisped her hand through her long blue locks. "I wouldn't have had to help you if you still had your crew mates to help you fight that ugly goon!"

"I swear that wasn't me! They were slaughtered by a," T.K then pulled out his note that he has received from the deceased pirate when this crazy mess all started and looked back up at this strange woman. "By a metal demon?"

"What?"

"I'm not exactly sure, but I have no crew-mates, it's just me down here..." T.K paused "Why did you attack me before?"

"You're alone?" Mimi turned around and signaled for her crew-mates to level the flying ships with one another so she could take another good look at T.K. "So where 'ya headed?"

"South. I need to find a town and gather some thing's before I go search out the giant-Hey wait! I'm not telling you this. Why do you even want to know, so you can follow me or something?"

"No silly, I want to _help_ you!" she responded cheerily.

"Oh yeah?! Well I don't take help from the forces of darkness!" T.K yelled as he let off three large cannon shots and blew the Silver Rose 50 miles away with explosions lighting up the storm-ridden sky like fireworks. Mimi jolted at the hit and all the crewmates smashed to the side of the ship. Mimi stood back and fumed with black energy surrounding her. "Is everybody alright?!" she called and raced to help her new friends.

"Back to the keep!!" She demanded, "Somebody give this ship some new digs!

**Meanwhile**, it was still day twoin Ruelah."Sir Wedge, sir!" Called a soldier.

"Yes?" responded Ken.

"What are we to do with the prisoners, sir?"

Ken looked through a monitor overlooking the prisoners. "The knight did nothing that I know of, but he was traveling with that ninja."

"Sir, we could not recover the Masamune off of the ninja."

"The Masamune?"

The cyborg servant raised his eyebrow and shifted through his papers. "The sword he stole from the Minstrel Kingdom, sir?"

"Right, right." Ken shook his head "The Masamune. I guess he stashed it somewhere."

"Yes, sir. Shall we execute him?"

"What?" Ken looked back over to the monitor at the less than fortunate blonde. "Well, a fair trial is in order. Perhaps I could question his friend as to why he is traveling with the thief and what kind of character this ninja is." Ken nodded "Yes, arrange for questioning tonight."

The servant nodded and sent a guard to the prisoners cell. The dungeon was dingy and rusted through and through. Whatever kind of establishment this jail was inside of sure could use a dusting and a paint job. Tai scraped his fingernail against the bars, collecting mounds of dirt under his nails. "I never thought I'd say this, but I sure could go for my moms home cooked dinner right about now" Tai said, sighing and longing to be outside again, on his way to save the princess and see the rest of his friends.

"I'd rather eat mold." Matt said as he looked to the corner of the cell at the green fuzz collecting near the toilet. He then felt his stomach turn and regretted saying anything about mold.

Just then a large, metal cyborg entered the room with a large metal laser-gun. "You!" He pointed to Tai.

Tai asked. "Me?"

"You!" The guard repeated.

Tai then jumped up with joy. "Me!"

"Get up. You are being questioned and you **will** participate in tonight's trial!" The bot said sternly as Tai looked up in fear at the threatening hunk of scrap.

"Yes sir." Tai said nervously. The cyborg opened the door to the cell, watching Matt closely the whole time. As soon as Tai exited the cell the cyborg slammed the door shut with a loud creek. "So, can I get my stuff back?"

The cyborg handed a brown sack half filled with knickknacks and sand to Tai. "No shield or sword. We must bring them to the kingdom of Minstrel to the daughter of deceased king. Slaughtered by this one." The bot said, pointing to Matt with a condemning stare. "We will ask her if this is the stolen sword of her fathers and if it is _not _then you will acquire it again. If not, you are both condemned to death by order of the SyNich."

"The SyNich?" Tai repeated, exchanging worried eye contact with Matt.

"The SyNich. The worlds source of legal protection." The SyNich was a group of Cyborgs who did all the policing and undercover investigations to protect the world. All were lead by Wedge, who was their main commander.

Tai nodded. "Uh huh... Well I'm in a hurry to um, meet someone. So I really need my sword back."

"Not until we show it to the Princess of Minstrel, not until after trial. This will take many days. Officer Wedge, my overseer, has been kind enough to let you stay here in Ruelah. Wedge has set up a room here at the SyNich headquarters for you to stay in until all business has been completed."

"Wonderful" Tai rolled his eyes and exasperatedly pointed to Matt. "What about him?"

"Death penalty."

"What?!" Matt yelled from his uncomfortable caged room. "I though you said I would only get the death penalty if the princess said the sword was her fathers?"

The cyborg smiled maliciously and took Tai away from the room. "Make yourself comfortable, this will be your home for the next few months. We have monitors throughout the building so don't try anything. Officer Wedge will greet you, I am sure." The Cyborg said as he walked Tai throughout the building. The pair walked out of the metal building into a small but fascinating town. All of the houses and establishments were made of metal it was kind of eerie.

The cyborg led Tai into the local Inn and paid for the room for the night. "Tonight is the only night we pay, so you will have to find work in the area."

"So I'm going to be here for _months_?"

**It** was day two in Tanek's Keepand Since Mimi's departure Sora had been thrown into a less than comfortable chamber. It was a room, all large gray bricks and a stack of hay for bedding. She shivered and felt her skin raise with chills, the room was freezing with cold air and the sense of darkness. "You're kidding yourself if you think you're going to bring me down!" Sora yelled, her voice echoing throughout the whole castle. "You and your stupid magic can kiss my-"

"Kiss you?" Tanek appeared out of thin air into Sora's makeshift room. "My dear, I'm repulsed. Here I thought you and I had this hateful repertoire coming along and now I find you've been hiding your true feelings for me?"

"Don't flatter yourself!" Sora spat back. The pair then spent a few awkward minutes exchanging their most fierce glares. Sora was the first one to back down.

"That's all?" Tanek laughed. "That's your mightiest stare?"

Sora turned around and sat on her haystack. She leaned her back against the brick wall and rested her chin in the palm of her hand. She looked Tanek up and down, as he stood before her in a very intimidating pose. His hair was silver and short but still with a bit of shag only on his left side, which accentuated his deep blue eyes. His jaw line was chiseled perfectly, you could tell that he was not much older than Sora, but still he seemed to be rather masculine. He had on a black jump suit with red accents that opened at his very tanned chest. His left pant leg was striped red and black and he had a blue cape. His whole outfit blinked in and out, it was all data rather then fabric, always moving.

There was also his sword, the final piece of his ensemble, she had heard him refer to it as the Black Blade, due to the, well, _black blade_ it held. All over his body she could see scrapes and bruises and began to wonder how many times he had lost the curious _Unlock_ game, and to that extend if anyone had ever even beat the game before. "Hey..."

"What is it?" Tanek responded.

"If you know this is a game, why do you still try?"

Tanek furrowed his brows and questioned, "I beg your pardon?"

"Well as the villain you must know that the good guys always win, so why bother trying?"

"The role of villain and hero are all in the eye of the beholder." Tanek laughed. "There is so little that you know. Game, reality, the line is thin. If this were a game, you wouldn't feel hurt when engaging in battle." He said as he swung a dagger at her arm, causing it to bleed. "But if this were 'real-life', then you wouldn't have had to hook up to a helmet to be here."

Sora fought off crying as she tightly shielded her wound with her hand. "I... don't understand. We _did_ use the helmets, so this isn't real, it can't be."

"Perhaps." He nodded, throwing her a strip of cloth to wrap her cut. "It is not your role to decipher whether this is fact or fiction, it is merely your role to be a princess who's lost her way."

Sora finished wrapping her arm and hung her head. "I guess you're right." Sora then lay down on the hay and drifted to sleep with no cares to Tanek's presence in the room. He wasn't out to harm her, she felt strangely safe here, knowing that nothing was coming her way just yet.

**It** was the _dusk of day two _in the Kingdom of Ruelah. It was now night and Tai had been eagerly awaiting the cyborg overseer to call on him in his new living quarters. His legs were shaking with a worried anticipation of the trial deciding his friend's fate. Matt just _had_ to kill a bunch of kings, didn't he? Just then there was a quiet, polite knocking at the door.

"Come in!" called Tai.

Ken opened the door and stepped in, bumping his skyscraper sized arm on the doorway. "Ouch" Ken mumbled quietly. "Hello. May I sit?"

Tai shrugged. "Yeah sure." He responded unsurely and Ken took a seat on the blue plaid covers. The metal mutant took a seat and looked around the room looking quite uncomfortable as flicked the hair away from his eyes and took of his visor. "My name is Wedge. I am captain of the cyborg warriors you met earlier." He explained. "You have been traveling with a Ninja who is wanted in several kingdoms. You will be attending the trial tonight, right?"

"Um, yeah. I'll be attending." Tai shifted uncomfortably with a different plan in mind. "When is it?"

"I will be escorting you there." Ken smiled. "I'm sorry for the loss you will have tonight. Your friend gets the death punishment if proven guilty, and I am quite sure he is just that. It's not my wish to cause you suffering tonight, but your friend has to pay for everything he has done and all the pain he's bestowed on all of these kingdoms."

"So," Tai began, "What happens to me after the trial?"

Just then there were men barging in the door yelling for Wedge. "The trial is beginning, sir!" they called. Ken stood up at stared down at the familiar knight with bushy brown hair. Ken and Tai were taken into a black carriage and carted back to the main building. On the ride there Ken couldn't help but get a sick feeling in his stomach, worse then that time he licked his moms deodorant on a dare! He watched the knight shuffle around and hum little tunes as he nervously looked out the window. Ken had a gut feeling, a correct gut feeling, that this was somebody from the real world, and if it was someone from the real world then what if the ninja was somebody from the real world, too?

Tai was taken to a gold and brown decorated courtroom with thousands of cyborg civilians overlooked the courtroom. There was a judge and a section of the room devoted to jurors, where Tai was seated. "We now call in the wanted!" A voice came from nowhere and Matt was dragged in with chains restricting his hands and feet.

"We would like to call in our first witness. Gavin Trella, one of the guards at the kingdom of Yazeem." Called the judge and a burley man entered the room. Just then very suspenseful music began playing from out of nowhere, Tai and Matt exchanged a glance and looked back at the man. "Trella, twenty-one days ago did you not see this blonde man come into your Kingdom and slaughter your king?"

"Yes."

The judge nodded. "And did he show remorse, did this seem like an accident?"

"No sir. He went right for the Sword of Larose and off he went."

"And you're sure this is the same man?" Asked the judge.

"Yes." Said the man, smiling at Matt as if he was getting some great revenge by testifying. The judge nodded and sent the man on his way. "Next!" He called. "Young Maryn, of Zebien."

"Hello Sir." She curtseyed and Tai felt a hint of relief, this was the girl who had helped them out and let them stay free at her Inn, Tai was sure he left a good impression on her and that she would have only nice thing's to say.

"How do you know the defendant?"

Maryn smiled. "I found him dusty and dirty outside of cave Yuda. He said it had exploded and he was caught in the blast so I brought him and his friend to my families Inn."

"I see, I see." Said the judge. "And do you know how the cave came to explode?"

"Well" She shifted. "I mean I suppose he blew it up when his gear had been lost in the cave. He was equip with bombs, after all."

Tai slapped his hand against his forehead; he knew that girl was bad news! The judge once again huffed around in his chair and then asked "Were you aware at all that he was wanted for regicide?"

"Um…" She blushed and hung her head.

"Nope, not a clue!" Tai yelled out nervously and then cupped his mouth at hearing himself speak those words out loud.

"CONTAIN YOURSELF, SIR!" Yelled the judge.

"Yes, I did. But he seemed a nice enough boy." She finally responded. "Thank you for your time, miss." Said the judge as he excused the girl. "Our next witness is Sir Isaac Marteendale of Beonce, possible accomplice to the defendant!" Called the judge and Tai stepped in front of the crowd, catching from the corner of his eye, Ken sneaking out of the room. "Sir Isaac, did you know that you had been traveling with a murderer?" Asked the judge.

"Well I mean _know_ is a pretty strong word, we don't really _know_ each other that well, I mean we traveled together but I didn't know he was a crazy man!" Tai stuttered.

"Tai!" Matt yelled from the stand accusingly.

"Who is Tai?" The judge asked.

Tai wiped his forehead. "Oh, no, no. He just said, he liked your tie, that's all! Heh, heh." He finished as he glared in Matt's direction.

The judge ordered Tai to return to his seat and called, "Our final witness, a video of the Ruelah Kingdom slaying. Our technology is much more advanced than any other kingdom, and with this projection we see the defendant slaying our king." The judge had a servant set up the projector and the whole room watched as it showed Matt run up and slay the king, taking his sword and slaying the rest of the troops who tried to stand in his way. Tai's eyes widened, as did Matt's as they glanced to one another. _"This is so not good."_ Thought Tai as he looked away from the video.

"We now call upon our five jurors. How do you find the defendant?" Asked the judge as five men walked out, all plump, wearing gray and looking exactly the same as one another.

"Guilty!" Yelled the first.

"Guilty!" Yelled the second.

"Guilty!" Yelled the third.

"Guilty!" Yelled the fourth.

Finally the fifth one came out, "Oh let me guess," Tai whispered sarcastically. "Guilty!" Yelled the fifth. "By order of the SyNich and the kingdom's of the slaughtered I pronounce the defendant guilty and sentenced to death by hanging at dawn!"

At this time Matt was currently feeling lower than the time they all played limbo, and it didn't help that the whole room echoed with applause and cheers as Matt was hauled away.

**January**25th, 7:00 P.M. at the Kamiya Household and within the past half hour, Izzy and the gang had stopped watching the monitor system Izzy had set up to take a snack break, pickled beets and bacon milkshakes, ala Mrs. Kamiya! Now they were all situated in front of their friends, sitting on yellow throw pillows. "Careful not to spill, bacon is so hard to get out!" Mrs. Kamiya called from the kitchen.

"I don't know…" Izzy whispered to himself.

"You've been saying that for the last ten minutes!" Joe complained. "What don't you know?"

"I just, don't know" Izzy repeated, this time sounding somewhat annoyed.

Joe threw his hands up in defeat and then passed around the beats. "I don't know what to do." Izzy complained. "I think they're in danger." He looked up at Mimi; her aura oozing darkness. "They could really get hurt in there and we're just sitting here eating vegetables!"

"We've gotta help them." Cody said while putting down his now empty glass, still stained with the hint of beige. Everyone seemed a little more on edge now with the idea that their friends could potentially die if they lost a battle or met the wrong crowd. Joe had been pacing around for the last half hour, Yolei fiddled on her computer trying to find a way to contact the players, Cody inspected the game console once more and Izzy was stuck with a blank stare, only breaking to say: 'I don't know.'

"This whole thing is giving me the creeps," Joe shivered "We shouldn't have meddled, you know how I feel about meddling! This whole thing was a bad idea, why do we want to help these people, if they are even people, I mean are they aliens? We don't know!"

"If we did it for the Digital World why wouldn't we offer our services to this world, too?" Yolei lectured.

"If this world is real like we think it is, their uninformed decisions could actually hurt the world, not help it." Joe said with a gesture of his hands. "They make one wrong move… I mean look, Matt's killing kings, Davis is stealing from pirates, and we don't even know _what's_ wrong with Mimi! All of these things could be very harmful to 'Unlock's' population!"

Yolei sighed, "Yeah I guess you're right. I never thought of it as meddling, I just though of it as a game. I didn't even consider that our actions might be hurting them!"

"And what about Tai and the others?" Cody piped in. "They should know about our world theory, otherwise they could ruin everything!"

"I've got it!" Izzy yelled and vigorously typed at his laptop. "I'll send them all a message of our theories! I'll send T.K a message through a treasure chest in the ship, Kari and Davis will get one in the sand, Tai and Matt can receive another skull message, I'll make up a fake bot to tell Ken about it and, well, Mimi and Sora are on their own; but at least most of them will know!" He grinned. "And I will send them a bunch of equipment, too! I'll program the best kind of armor, weapons and items there are and send it to them!"

"Izzy, slow down!" Joe yelled. "Don't you think that's a bit too much to send? I mean we sent Patamon and that was risky, we sent the note and the potion and it worked out all right but that's a lot of messages. I mean maybe we should take it one step at a time, just tell one person, send small things. You know?"

"Now's not the time to be safe, Joe." Izzy stated.

At hearing this, Joe nearly dropped his milkshake like the hot melted bacon that it was. "Now is the _perfect_ time to be safe!"

"I know that, but when my friends lives lay in the balance I'm going to try to send them a message and all the items necessary to help them!"

"What? Now you're not even making sense! Now is not the time to be safe, even though you know now is the time to be safe, and when it comes to your friends you're going to act crazy?!"

"Hey!" Izzy yelled. "It's a perfectly good idea and I am 90 per cent sure that no harm will come to them! I mean if I can send Patamon through with no dismal reactions then I'm sure a few notes and items will hurt them. Think about it, we can send ourselves through the digital world with no harm done and this isn't all that different."

Joe shouted, "I can't believe you're ignoring all caution!" Just then, Mrs. Kamiya came in the room and picked up their plates and cups. "Caution for what?" She asked.

All four children looked up at her and smiled large-teeth-baring-smiles. "Caution for a, um, for a science project!" Joe smiled.

"Oh, wonderful!" Mrs. Kamiya cheered and took a seat on one of the cushions. "What is the project?"

"Well," Joe looked around the room nervously. "We are working on a project with a, um, a cockroach, yeah! You see we have to put the cockroach in a new habitat and monitor how it adjusts to the new living situation. We've already done that and it adjusted as best it could, but now we have to give it a nice leaf to chew on."

"Fascinating!" Mrs. Kamiya smiled. "What's the caution for?"

Joe scratched his head and looked nervously behind him at his bubble-dome-friends. "Well Izzy and I are having a disagreement about the leaf. You see Izzy wants to give the cockroach eighty leaves all at once, and that could possibly kill the cockroach… Because if you know anything about cockroaches you know that, just like goldfishes, cockroaches don't know when they're full so if they eat too much they could **explode**!" he lied as he glared at Izzy. "I say we send in one leaf at a time until we know how much he will eat!"

"The problem with that is that according to my calculations the cockroach is in _dire_ need of _many_ leaves, so regardless of how many leaves we feed it, at least it will _have_ leaves!" Izzy spat back.

"Well," Mrs. Kamiya stood up, not wanting to get involved in the bickering. "I'm sure you boys will work things out!" She smiled and walked back into the kitchen all the while wondering: where _was_ that cockroach?

"Way to go, now she thinks you're fighting!" Said Cody.

"We _are_ fighting!" Said Joe. "I don't agree with the way you want to do things, Izzy, I'm sorry!"

"Well it's too late anyway, I've sent all the items through my computer. It's done!" Izzy smiled triumphantly as the program accepted Izzy's new equipment for his fellow Digi-Destined. His smile quickly faded though as his computer screen began flashing red. A notice popped up which read: 'UNLOCK ERROR IMMINENT.'

"Uh oh."

**It** was the dusk of Day Two in the Kingdom of Ruelah and it had now been hours since the trial and Tai had been left in a metal holding room without any idea as to when he was to get out. Finally a cyborg walked in." You!" Yelled a bot as he threw a plate of food at Tai. "**You **wait here while I go get-"

"I don't think so!" Tai yelled as he slashed the metal-man with his sword. "See ya!" He grinned as he bolted out of the room. Down the hallway Tai rushed and left out any admiration for the amazing house of bots. A herd of soldiers marched down the hallway and Tai hid in the corner of the indented wall as they passed, he quickly ran the other way, trying to cause little noise from the clinking of his armor. After going down endless flights of stairs and engaging in three bot-battles, Tai made it to the dungeon. "Matt?" He whispered and looked around anxiously and completely oblivious to Ken who was also coming to retrieve Matt for the hanging. "Matt?" Ken whispered to himself. _Oh no_, the ninja is _Matt_! Ken didn't move but hid in the shadows hoping to hear more confirming evidence.

"Matt you'd better respond soon otherwise you'll be sharing a burial plot with Bakemon!!"

Bingo!

Tai searched around and finally in the damp, corner cell where he had just spend his time rotting hours earlier, Matt was sitting on the cold floor looking up at Tai. "Tai!" He yelled. "Well, am I free?"

"Not exactly!" Tai winced.

Matt raised his eyebrow. "What does _that_ mean?"

"Well it means you're guilty and you're just about to get hanged! But never fear, Tai is here to rescue you!"

Double Bingo.

Tai bent down to the lock and pulled out a metal sliver, his lock pick. "I'm glad Izzy always forgets to bring his house key, otherwise I wouldn't have learned this little tidbit when I stayed at his house for the summer!" He mused as he picked the lock and dragged Matt out of the cell. "Where to now?" Matt asked as they began running.

"Well, I hope you're in the mood for some leveling up!" Tai grinned as they headed into a vast hallway of battles.

Meanwhile Ken was still sitting in the jail room, now being bombarded with guards trying to go after the newly escaped convict. "Wait, wait!" Ken commanded. He couldn't let them kill Matt!

**It** was the dusk of day two in the Kingdom of Siah. Davis and Kari had long since wandered off from Super Davis and walked miles back to the kingdom of Siah to find a mechanic who would sell them parts for the mech. As the kingdom came into view, the sun had set and everything went dark. All of the sudden, gray monsters with many eyes popped up from the ground and began attacking them. As they phased into battle, they saw their hit points and battle commands appear.

The gray beast leaped forward and took a bite out of Davis' arm, blood spewing everywhere as its teeth sunk in. Davis and Kari both began screaming at the sight, but when the beasts turn was over they saw that Davis' arm was just fine. Not a scratch to be had.

Despite the text box above Davis' head reading, "103 DAMAGE, 005 HEALTH REMAINING" he still managed to yelp, "I'm invincible!"

Kari rolled her eyes and put up a shield, "I don't think you're invincible, maybe it just missed!"

"Missed, are you crazy?" He yelled, "Didn't you see my blood!?"

"Yeah, yeah, I saw it." She huffed. Kari then began slapping the monster with her hand.

"Are you even trying to help?!" Davis yelled as he watched her do one point of damage, whilst she slapped the beast. "Stand aside and watch me work!" He said as he ran towards the creature and his arm-cannon began charging up in a light shade of blue. He could feel the energy pulsing through his arm, and his body began to shake. It felt like all of his blood was flooding into his arm. This was it. This is when he would charge his most triumphant attack. Just as his arm opened to shoot, a chime played loudly throughout the skies and a notice above Davis' head reading "Second Wind not engaged." Following the message, an almost invisible beam shot forth from Davis' arm.

"What the?" Davis whispered as his face went red.

Just then a million skulls began dropping from the sky, hitting Davis and Kari on the head until they were both knocked out. They woke up 3 hours later lying at the bridge of what seemed to still be Siah Kingdom. The skies were shaded purple and the clouds appeared to be made of various weapons. The grass was red and chipping in and out of vision.

"Has the whole world gone even more bananas?!" Davis shouted while he looked around at his somewhat familiar, new, surroundings.

"Marth, what just happened?" Kari said as she stood up and rubbed her arm. Flicking off the tiny bits of flaky grass.

"I don't know. Man, this is weirder than the time DemiVeemon put a turkey on his head and pretended to be my aunt Betty!"

Kari hid a smirk from Davis and turned her head. If she had any question of this not being Davis, it had just been overruled with that comment… that very, strange, comment. "Are we still at the gates of Siah Kingdom?"

"I don't know." He paused. "I'll go check that wooden sign." As Davis strolled over to the introduction sign, his face was overcome with shock and horror as he read its caption.

DAVISDAVISDAVISDAVI0DANGER000SDAVISDAVISDAVISDAVIS

Davis yelped in horror and Kari rushed over and yelled, "What is it?"

As she approached the sign, she too realized something was terribly wrong. "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."

"Who's Toto?" Davis shouted, "And who's this Davio Dangeroose, and what does he think he's doing stealing my territory!"

* * *

The destined are in a pickle now! Hope you guys are liking it so far. Chapter 6 will be up really soon!


	6. Chapter 6

**CHAPTER SIX**

**It** was the dusk of day two on the Silver Rose battleshipand it was the strangest thing, one second, Mimi had been speaking with the impressive army placed under her command, standing on the most advanced ship in the entire world. The next second, Mimi was speaking to the most mobile and articulate army of stacked chairs she had ever met, and she was standing on what she could only imagine was the most advanced flying pumpkin in the entire world.

"Blue?" A chair-stack called out to her. "Green, green, green yellow blue?" He finished with a curious tone. Mimi was quick to answer him the same way she had been answering him for the last four minutes.

"Stop saying colors and answer me! What happened to the ship? Why are you all chairs!?" She screamed. Her first guess had been that the chairs had simply mutinied against the crew and that now chairs ruled the ship. However, they obeyed her commands and spoke to her in pleasing tones. All they would say were text boxes filled with color names, but it was enough for her to guess they were her soldiers. Besides, there were no chairs like that on her ship.

"Orange green…purple?" It questioned in the same tone as before. It suddenly came to Mimi that these chairs/soldiers might not know that they were only speaking in colors. If she was the only one seeing and hearing things this way, they were going to think she'd gone mad. They were probably right.

"Uh, right. Look, I don't have time to answer questions right now, okay?" She started. She had to leave fast and gather herself, or else she would raise even further suspicion. "I'm going to my room, okay?"

As Mimi turned to the door, she came to notice that there was no door, and that she was still very much on a flying pumpkin. She had no idea where anything was. She could only guess at where she was going, and if she chose to feel her way around like a blind person then she was only going to look crazier. Mimi didn't know much about the army, but she knew soldiers didn't like having crazy Generals.

"Actually, I've decided not to do that. I'm gonna stand here and think, and I don't want anyone to ask me anything. Just go back to Tanek's castle so we can fix up the pumpkin. Did I say pumpkin? I mean ship. I said don't talk to me!" She yelled in a panic. The stacks of chairs quickly fled to what she assumed were their posts, and Mimi stared out into the incredibly messed up sea.

This whole situation seemed wrong to Mimi, not even taking into account the world's sudden unexplainable mutation. Tanek said T.K's ship would be easy to beat, but it had blown her back so hard that she thought her eyes might pop out; and she loved her eyes!

"Maybe I should get on his ship next time…" She mumbled to herself as she thumbed over her sword's ivy. She could probably defeat him in a fight and take him back by force, if he wanted. Clearly T.K suffered from the same program Sora did. Why would he attack her and accuse her of being dark? Some people couldn't be reasoned with, and Mimi did feel strong enough to take on the world. Why, she could probably lift that whole giant pumpkin!

Still… Mimi didn't want to attack her friends. Oh, this was so frustrating! T.K was one tough nut to crack. He was like a walnut or…some other kind of nut. Mimi wasn't big on nuts. They had too much salt and not enough sugar. Sweet was really more Mimi's kind of food, although she had to be careful about that part of her diet. Too much candy and she'd have to go back and see Dr. Tibblet again, and he was as creepy an old man as they came.

"Maybe my dad was right. Maybe I do have ADD…" Mimi worried slightly as she sat down on the floor. Getting back to the Tanek's castle where she could watch Sora from afar would probably make her feel better, and this ship was clearly not as advanced as Tanek had lead her to believe.

**It** was the dusk of day two in what Davis was sure was Siah Kingdom, thoughthe more he sat here the more he realized something was amiss.

The axe clouds were quietly rolling over the giant half of a squid in the purple sky. The small bugs made of crayons danced around in the red grass that couldn't make up its mind about existing. This would have been an average day if Davis and Kari had been in that dream Cody had after eating eight pounds of candy one rather delicious Halloween night. Alas, this was not the case, and so something was clearly wrong.

"Okay, what did you do?" Kari asked after analyzing the situation. It was clear that whatever was happening was Davis' fault. Well, maybe not, but blaming Davis usually helped relieve stress.

"Me!?" Davis yelled. "I didn't do anything! Well, at least I don't think I did anything. I guess it's possible that I'm so awesome that I made the sign jealous and it took my name, and then I made the sky and grass go crazy because my awesomeness was too much for them. In fact, now that I think of it, that's probably what happened! Oh, what have I done!? Darn my good looks, charm, grace, muscles, brains…"

As Davis rambled on, it became increasingly obvious to Kari that this wasn't Davis' fault at all.

"Never mind, Marth. I'm sure it wasn't your fault." She sighed, rolling her eyes. "Let's just look around. I'm sure this is just part of the game."

Kari caught herself at the end of her sentence, but there wasn't anything she could do about it now. Davis stood there, looking at her like she had just transformed into one of the many aunts he professed to have, but who she had ever actually seen. "Game?" Davis asked, his eyebrow rose as he struggled to wrap his mind around her comment. This was quite common for Davis.

"O-Oh…" Kari stuttered. "You know. This great big game we call life!" She exclaimed in an entirely too exuberant voice. It was one of the stupidest cover-ups she'd ever used, and she'd once used Mimi's green cover-up to hide a pimple! However, it didn't keep her from knowing Davis would buy it. He did.

"Oh, okay. Yeah, that's what I meant, too. I mean, I didn't say anything, but if I had then that would have been what I meant. I mean, it's not like we're trapped in a video game or anything. What's a video game, anyways? Those kids today play too much of them, whatever they are. Wait, I'm not old, I'm just lying. No, wait, I mean…let's look around!" Davis stuttered and babbled incoherently until finally reaching Kari's earlier conclusion. Then surely she will have fallen for his clever ruse.

"Uhh…sure." She said, only half understanding anything just said.

And so, they began exploring the town together. The town, if it were possible, was more screwed up than the sky. Doors were made of shirts and the boards and bricks of houses were made of assorted foods, which Davis had painfully tempted to eat. As it turned out, these things still felt and tasted like boards and bricks. Kari was sure it had something to do with the game messing up, but she wasn't quite sure what it was. Davis, on the other hand, assumed that this was simply the nature of this new town.

Suddenly, they came upon a small flight of stairs. Normally, this wouldn't be of any particular importance. However, the stairs had somewhat of a familiar face to them.

"Tai!" Davis screeched as he ran over to the stairs. The stairs, rather than being made of traditional brick, were flesh colored, with brown spiky hair jutting out of them. In fact, they were a bunch of Tai heads!

"Oh Tai, what have they done to you?" Davis whimpered as he hugged the stairs. "Tai, you never had a chance!" He yelled. "You didn't even get a character, you've been turned into stone!"

_Oh no…_

Davis had a thought, what if Tai's character wasn't a stone, what if an evil witch had cast a spell on Tai, and the only way to save him was to bring him to the enchanted woods and offer up a sacrifice in exchange for Tai's soul and body back?? "I don't want to be a sacrifice!" Davis shrieked in terror. Kari gave him a very annoyed look and he composed himself. "I mean… we must save him!" He shouted with great resolve in his voice.

Although Kari was concerned about the fate of her brother, she took a deep breath and touched Davis on the shoulder. "Marth, I'm sure everything is going to be alright with your friend here… Maybe we'll come back for him after we get through this town."

Before Kari could make another suggestion, Davis began chipping away at the stairs with his arm.

"What are you doing?" Kari huffed as she crossed her arms.

Davis couldn't hear Kari over his arm banging against the stone Tai heads and thus continued to bang. "Hey, I asked what you're doing!" Kari yelled even louder. Davis still couldn't hear Kari and mashed his arm harder into a jagged part of the rock. His arm proceeded to get stuck and panic set in. "Vivian, help me!" He called with fright in his voice.

Just then, Davis' arm-cannon began charging up the same shade of blue as before. "Oh great, _now_ what have you done?" Kari screeched.

"Oh man, I must have hit some kind of super charging button. Oh well, nothing's gonna happen anyway, it'll just chime and shoot a little beam." He shrugged, "No biggie."

"Well, if you say so…" Kari then backed away from Davis as he began shaking. His arm began trembling and he began to worry when he couldn't control it anymore. Just as his arm opened to shoot, a chime played loudly throughout the skies and a notice above Davis' head read, "Second Wind not engaged. GO NORTH." Following the message, a huge yellow beam shot out of Davis' arm shooting off to the north. The blast sent him flying backwards, all the way out of the town and back into the "grassy" fields.

Kari yelled, "Marth!" and ran as fast as she could. She then began trying to find Davis while playing a twisted game of Marco-polo, which involved her yelling for 'Marth' and Davis gurgling every few minutes. "Marth, where are you?"

"There's a lot of grass," came his raspy response.

"Marth, cooperate!" She looked around the seemingly empty field and seen a glimmer of Davis' blue goggles which were now frosted with dirt. She ran to him and pulled him up into a sitting position. "Are you alright, how's your arm?"

"I guess I don't know my own strength," he chuckled, followed by clutching his hurt arm. "I'm surprised it's still attached!"

"What _was_ that…?" She whispered, staring off in the direction of the Kingdom.

"Last time it said that the second wind wasn't around or something, now it's telling me to go north."

She looked back at Davis and held a concerned look in her eyes. "You're not going to go, are you?"

"What am I supposed to do?" He said, "It's not like I'll be able to find Super-Davis very easily. The whole scenery has gone bananas!"

"You're seriously suggesting we go north and try and find this… second wind? What is it, and why do you even need it?"

Davis nodded and flashed a grin. "That's exactly what I want to find out! Hurrah, let's go north!" He cheered. "But wait, how do know where north is?" Just then, a text box appeared with an arrow and said 'go north'. "Wow, way to be specific." Davis said with a roll of his eyes. The few seconds of silence were then interrupted as the beam from Davis' cannon had landed in the distance, causing a gigantic explosion of red smoke that formed in the shape of an arrow.

Davis and Kari exchanged a worried glance and Davis said, "I think my crazy cannon is trying to tell me something…"

"Yeah, that it has terrible indigestion!" Kari joked.

Davis smiled and said, "I think we should follow it."

Kari smiled, "Or give it some Pepto Bismal."

Before Davis could stand back on his feet, he saw a fleet of soldiers in the distance. They stomped in unison causing an unsettling rumble in the ground. Davis then though out loud, "Hey, maybe they can help us!"

Upon closer inspection, the soldiers all had Tai heads for bodies and turkey legs for heads! "There they are, there are the perpetrators!" They gobbled out. "Arrest them. Have their heads!"

Just then, a loud buzzing was heard and thousands of paper notes began falling from the sky. Kari sighed and looked at Davis, who was smiling sheepishly. Kari then whispered, "Could thing's possibly get any worse?"

**January** 25th, 7:00 P.M. at the Kamiya Household

"Thing's couldn't possibly get any worse!" Yelled a nervous Joe. "Look what you've done!" He screeched as he inhaled from his asthma puffer.

"Cool it Joe, you're going to have a meltdown!" Cody insisted.

"Cool it Joe?" Joe repeated. "Cool it Joe?! I'm sorry Cody but I can't quite _cool it_ when my friends are being melted away by error 404's!"

"Actually this wouldn't technically be a 404 error," Izzy said quietly.

Joe's eyes widened and a vein became very visible on his forehead. "Now is _not _the time!"

"Look you guys," said Yolei, "We've got at least one brilliant brain here, I'm sure we can all figure this out!" She huffed. "Now then, Izzy, what do we know so far?"

"Well," Izzy said, "We've lost our connection with the camera view, but according to my calculations… I think I may have made a bit of a judgment error."

"You think?!" Joe yelled.

"I'm just working on getting a camera view. It seems my packages weren't received very well. The whole mainframe keeps trying to boot me. This is very strange." Izzy said.

"What's so strange about it?" Yolei said, sneaking a peek at Izzy's laptop screen.

Izzy clicked and typed away trying to find the reason for the boot. "Well, I've overridden the actual mainframe's firewall… it's funny, it actually seems like _someone_ is trying to stop me. Like, an actual person. I keep going through these firewalls like somebody is throwing them in my face. Very interesting." Izzy mused.

Cody then piped up, "Hey Izzy, maybe you should be working on a way to fix what you've done, instead of focusing on breaking back in."

"Guys," Izzy gestured his hands, calling everybody towards the laptop screen. "I think… we have an issue." Izzy then pointed his laptop screen, which was completely black, until a blue text box appeared which read,

"I politely ask you to desist from your meddling in my world.

If I witness any further interference, I will take matters into my own hands.

Let's face it Izzy, you're becoming a problem."

Izzy felt chills go down his spine as he turned his swivel chair to face his friends. He felt slightly embarrassed for what had happened, and to top off him screwing up a universe, he was now receiving E-threats… great, just great. But now wasn't the time to be discouraged.

"Alrighty," said Joe as he flopped back down onto the yellow cushion on the floor, "They're doomed. We're doomed. Any second now you're computer will explode and we'll receive a ticking time bomb in the mail!"

"Quit being so dramatic!" Yolei said, "I'm sure Izzy has a plan, right Izzy?"

"Of course," Izzy said. He then turned off his laptop and declared, "Dinner break!"

**Day **Two was so much more complicated than Day One was in this world at least Mimi thought so. She was thankful that day three was just around the corner.

Mimi opened the large black door to Tanek's Keep and was relieved to see soldiers, and not colored chairs, walking around the entrance hall. Mimi smiled and looked up at the soldiers, they were so neatly dressed. Her mind began to wander as she watched them walking back and forth. She wondered, what do they do all the time? What do they think about while they walk? Do they have wives? What was their opinion of spray-on tans? Life here sure was a mystery.

Before entering the foyer where most of the living was done in this castle, Mimi stopped in her tracks as she heard Tanek speaking with Sora.

She peeked her head around the doorframe and listened in.

"What's your full name?" Sora asked, quickly followed by, "How old are you?" Tanek, though, was not paying attention, but rather he was pacing the room in a very annoying fashion. "Who is that girl that's wandering around here all the time?" Sora asked.

Tanek wandered the room looking as though something heavy was weighing on his mind. His eyes were glazed over in a daze and Sora yelled, "Tanek!" to try and get his attention.

He quickly rushed and sat down across from her. "Has she hurt you in some way?"

Sora shook her head no and said, "She's just here and then not, here and then not, she's a regular Wizardmon! And she's creepy too, just skulking around never saying anything. I mean, is she your henchman, or your girlfriend?"

Tanek smirked as he raised his eyebrow. "Jealous?" He said softly.

"Yuck, don't flatter yourself!" She huffed. She then narrowed her eyes down to her tattered beige skirt and watched the tans and pink fabrics flutter from her shirt. She looked around the castle, barely moving her head. The walls were all black brick and there were windows without any glass, there were at least 20 open windows chilling up the place. There was a drawbridge inside of the house, it lead to a room she had never entered. There water underneath the bridge looked deep. It was a color and a texture that even Mrs. Kamiya wouldn't use for a recipe!

"What's in there?" Sora asked as she nodded her head in the direction of the drawbridge.

Tanek held his hand over his chin. He narrowed his eyes in her direction and then raised his head high. Standing up he whipped his cape behind him and whispered, "If you can't keep your curiosity in check then I have no use for you any longer." He then walked across the bridge and disappeared into the shadows.

Mimi was still watching from the hallway. She then entered the foyer and tried so hard to heed Tanek's command of not talking to Sora and there were so many things to tell her, too! A somber look overcame her and her eyebrows lowered. She hung her head and closed her eyes, letting her long black lashes rest on her rosy cheeks. When she opened them, she was greeted with Sora, staring awkwardly at her from the couch.

"Hello." Sora mumbled quietly. There was something terribly familiar about this girl. Even though she was incredibly creepy, Sora wanted to get to know her. "What's your name?"

Mimi fought off the urge to smile and instead, stared blankly at Sora. Boy, she didn't look so evil from over here. Mimi shook her head and wandered throughout the castle. Sora stood up and began following her. "Where are you going?" Sora asked but Mimi did not respond, instead, headed for her quarters.

"Tanek went over the bridge," Sora said, "If you're looking for him."

Mimi did not look at Sora, but began turning the knob to her room. Before entering, she turned around and stood in the doorway, looking at Sora. Sora must have been very lonely, having to sit on a haystack and talk with guards all day, and with no cosmetics at that! Mimi offered a reassuring smile to Sora and before shutting the door she whispered, "You're going to be alright."

The next morning marked the **dawn of day three**. Mimi walked into the foyer and saw Tanek standing with his forehead leaning against the fireplace mantel, there seemed to be a glow about him that made her feel much less inclined to speak with him. "Tanek?" She piped up quietly. "There's something I wanted to talk with you about."

But Tanek did not respond.

"Um. It's about the Silver Rose and, well, and some other things…"

Tanek stood silent, unmoving, she feared he had died standing up. Creepy. She couldn't even hear a breath. She then became scared, wondering what she would do if he had just keeled over near the fire… who would help her save her friends? She then walked over to him and touched his shoulder, "Tanek?"

He then jerked away from her and his eyes changed from red to blue. "What?!" His yell echoed through the castle.

"Oops, sorry!" She giggled, "I know I hate it when people interrupt my Yoga, too, but this is important!"

Tanek shook his head and tried to calm himself. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have shouted. What is it, Kanzas?"

"Well it's about the soldiers you put under my command."

Tanek nodded with sheer annoyance and said, "Yes?"

"Well see, you didn't mention that after 12 hours they turn into chairs!" She smiled. "There were still polite and obedient and everything, I think, but it just took me by surprise, that's all!"

"…Chairs?"

She nodded with a grin. "Yes. I mean, they are okay now, but on the Silver Rose they were chairs!" She watched a very alarmed expression come over Tanek's face as he looked down at the skeleton key that began appearing on the chain around his neck. "Hey I didn't know you bought a necklace!" She cheered, "You should have invited me to come with you, I'm an excellent judge of fashion and taste, but that's okay, I forgive you, just promise to invite me next time!" She said with a wink.

Tanek looked down and grasped his hand over the key. His eyes widened and his head jolted back up. "Not again…" He whispered as he began running to the drawbridge.

**Much **had happened since Tai and Matt had attempted leaving the Psynich prison. Tai woke up on a beach of purple sand and bunny face clouds. He found this quite perplexing. It seemed as though there was an explosion in the jail, as the last thing Tai remembered was running through the courtyard outside of the jail and then a bright light.

His eyes were burning but he wasn't tired. Maybe it was the wind, or the sucker punch from one of those cyborg guys that had something to do with it. The sand was warm on his face as he laid belly first into the sand. He cared not for the bugs that were crawling across him, burrowing their way into his skin. With the trial and escape day that he'd just had, he didn't care about much right now.

It appeared as though Tai had landed on a beach of some sorts. His face was dangerously close to the sea. The water was green from the moss growing around the rocks and there were trees surrounding the whole area.

He looked over at Matt who was sleeping and not too far away from where Tai was laying. His blonde hair was dirty with sand and dirt from throughout the day. He supposed they both blacked out after the heist with the bots. Tai rolled over, reapplying sand to the top of his closed eye. It was cold, refreshing even.

He looked back up at the very awkward sky, not a star in sight.

He'd never been much with directions. They'll never find the North Star while he was on watch. He began to wonder if he'd ever find this princess of Zebien and what the ransom for her is. He wondered if there would be a reward…perhaps her hand? What happens if she isn't fond of this idea? Ah, no bother. Likely, she already has a boy-toy, someone smitten with her. After all, Tai didn't belong here. He was just the guy summoned from a different time, some hero destined to do what all the other destined heroes couldn't do, he guessed.

At first, the idea of being sucked into a video game seemed exciting, however, this world now felt foreign and uncomfortable. He missed Neko. He hoped his mom was feeding her.

What was the deal anyway… evildoers kidnapping princesses? If Tai had any courage when he meets him, he'd ask Tanek what the deal was. Or he would make Matt ask, or maybe… maybe he'd just forget it… save the princess and go home. Defeat 'ole Tanek and get on with it.

"You still up?" Came Matt's quivering voice. The beach was very cold.

"I'm awake."

"We'd best check around for that guy who was following us, maybe we can get some answers" Matt said as he brushed off the sand from his already dirty pants.

Tai and Matt wandered the beach and soon realized they were actually in the midst of a town. "A near gone fishin' town," or so said a very frightening, very toothless local old man. It seemed that Matt and Tai had brought a flood along with them to the town called Dorsal, as people were rebuilding their huts frantically and boarding up their windows.

"What happened?" Matt asked the man, concern masking his tone.

"And do you guys have any good restaurants that weren't destroyed?" said Tai.

"Tai, could you stop thinking about food for two seconds and grow some compassion?" Matt disciplined.

The old man laughed and said, "This is Dorsal, a near gone fishin' town!"

Matt and Tai exchanged worried glances and turned back to the toothless chap. "Do you know where we can eat something?!" Tai said, rather loudly.

The man raised his eyebrows questionably and put both of his hands on his large gut. Shaking his belly fat he hollered, "This is Dorsal, a near gone fishin' town!"

"That's great!" Tai said in annoyance, "I love fish, do you know where I could possibly _eat_ some?"

Just then, a man walked up to Matt and Tai. It turned out that they were all standing in front of the local bar, which, luckily for this strange, booze soaked man, hadn't been destroyed in the flood. The man was dressed in a black velvet suit with a red tie. He didn't seem like he lived there, for he had a well-trimmed mustache and looked professional, a real businessman. This professional image was then crushed as he took a swig from the large bottle at his side and said, "You must be Matt Ishida." He smiled and shook Matt's hand.

"Oh great Matt, is this some guy who's royal father you whacked?" Tai said half sarcastic and half frightened that he would be right

"How… how did you know my… I mean! Nope, not me, I've never heard of the guy." Matt said nervously as he smiled. "I'm just a traveler from the East."

"Never fear, Chandler is here!" The man said as he smashed his bottle 'o booze onto the ground.

"That, was a little frightening…" Tai whispered as he eyed Matt. "Well, that's very nice, uh, Chandler." Tai then extended his hand and shook Chandlers hand. "But we really should get going."

"Tanek brought upon the great flood, and I assume he's looking for you kids." Said Chandler as he stumbled.

"What… did you say Tanek?" Tai asked.

The man stumbled about for a few minutes. While trying to retain his balance, he clutched onto a fence post outside the bar. He then began walking down a path towards a small hut. He turned his head and signaled with his hand for the boys to follow him.

Tai eagerly began following the curious man until Matt grabbed his hand and smacked him across the chest. "What do you think you're doing, are you crazy?"

Tai looked around at the scenery, it seemed like a peaceful little… flooded… doomed town. He turned back to Matt and shrugged, "Just crazy enough?"

"This isn't funny, Tai. This crazy, drunken guy knows my name!"

"Yeah, exactly!" Tai cheered, "This is probably some awesome clue that Izzy has hacked for us, you should show more appreciation for your smart friends, like me!" He taunted. "And maybe he has food!" He called to Matt as he ran ahead.

The pair entered the strange hut that the man went into. If possible, it smelled fouler than the moldy beach they had been resting on earlier. The house consisted of grassy walls, a table, a bed right next to it and a fireplace that would obviously, magically, not light the whole house on fire when turned on. "Sit, sit!" Said the man as he poured a brown liquid into two small glasses.

Placing the cups before Matt and Tai, the man said. "So you're the next on the docket, hm?"

"I… don't know what that word means," said Tai.

"Human players." The man said, gulping away the rest of the brown juice. "You mind?" He gestured with his hand to Matt's glass. Matt raised his eyebrows and moved his glass closer to Chandler, who then drank its contents. At least he tried to be polite?

"Aren't we all human players in this game called… life?" Tai said with a sheepish grin. "Look Izzy, you can give it up, we know it's you!" Tai said happily, until he received an elbow jab from Matt.

"Izzy?" Chandler asked, "I'm afraid I've not the foggiest whom you speak of, however, I do know that you…" He gestured to Matt, "Are a very wanted man, and not just by the law enforcements!"

Matt raised his eyebrow, "Oh?"

"Just so happens I know a 'fella who's been trying to seek you out, says you're the one who's gonna take the Lacryma saber."

Matt sat there for a moment before he realized the man had finished his sentence. It was hard to tell, with the slurring and all. "Pardon me, the Lacryma?"

"The great sword made of pure, one hundred and eighty nine heroes bones." Chandler chuckled.

"What?!" Tai said in disgust. "Is that even practical?"

"He earned it." Chandler said with the tip of the hat that he wasn't wearing. "One hundred and eighty nine heroes, not unlike yourself. Those summoned to defeat Tanek and save us all, those who failed paid the ultimate price." The man sat for a moment, seeming not so jolly anymore as he reminisced. "Lost 'ma dad for that very reason. Took him nine in-game years to figure it out…"

"Figure what out?" Asked Tai.

"Figure out where he was going." Chandler then smiled. "Doesn't matter now, you blokes will figure it out. Well, you will." He said with his mud encrusted finger pointed at Matt. "Now you," He then pointed to Tai, "You, I don't know what you're doing around Matt, as you're a knight of the round, serving under King Sebastian, and no matter how much good this bloke is gonna do, you're still shaming your kingdom for hanging around."

"Shows what you know!" Tai said, now feeling defensive. "I'm not shaming anybody. I'm going to save a princess, if you must know!"

Chandler placed his hand over his mouth and hung his head. "So you'll go then?" He then stood up and vigorously shuffled through some scrolls. "Please, I beg of you, before you continue, you _must_ see this man. He lives in Dacre village, by the name of Xander. He'll show you the light, just like he showed me dad." Chandler then handed Matt a scroll containing very little information on this "Xander" character, including the places he frequently visits. "It's imperative that this scroll not leave your side. Surely, Xander is your only hope, however, there are many that given the information of his whereabouts would gladly take his life."

"Uh," Tai gulped. "And this is the guy we should be trusting?"

"Use your own discretion." Chandler said happily. "He's got the answers to the questions you should be asking. It seems like my part here is done." He gave a sad smile. "I guess… I'll hit the reset and hope for the best, hope that you, either of you, are the _one_."

"Hey, wait!" Matt called, "What are you doing?"

"I've got a life waiting." The man said and slowly began to disappear. "Matt, good luck." With that, a red text box appeared where the man had been standing which read: PLAYER 59 HAS ABORTED MISSION - TERMINATION OF CELLS COMPLETE.

Matt and Tai quickly made their way out of the hut, not bothered to speak to one another about the murder suicide via gaming system that had just happened to their new pal Chandler, neither had they glanced at the scroll that had been given them. They made their way through the town in a silent haze. Suddenly the town started looking different. Mushroom and marshmallow houses replaced the huts that once scattered across the beached fishing town. The sand, suddenly not so sandy, but more like round yellow happy faces covering the whole town. The once green water was now in the shape of many old man heads, much to Tai's amusement and horror.

Tai sat on the beach with Matt, both feeling quite confused. Tai splashed some old-man-head-water on his face and mused, "Could this town get any weirder?"

**One **might be offended if they were to expend as much energy as Mimi had in talking to Tanek, only to have him whisper to himself and stalk out without a second thought as to the fact that he was being spoken to. One might, were one not Mimi Tachikawa. Mimi was rather used to people not paying attention to things she was saying, and this was especially true of Tanek. Well, it was actually true of Tanek, her friends, her parents, her teachers... Mimi tried not to think about it. The point of the matter was that Mimi was able to view the situation in such a way as to not be offended. Tanek was a busy man, after all. Maybe he knew her problem already, and he was off to fix it. Perhaps he had assumed she would need to sit down a lot on her voyage, and that she liked colors and pumpkins; then realizing that this was not the case, he rushed off to fix whatever he had done to her ship. It's not that Mimi didn't like colors, but simply hearing the words over and over again without seeing them was more torture than anything else.

Perhaps Tanek also knew that the Silver Rose was terribly out-gunned by T.K's odd little flying machine, and he was off to outfit it with all manner of things that go boom and bang. Mimi wasn't big on sound effects or weaponry, really. She'd earlier asked one of the crew why they didn't have a large arm with a sword on the end that came out of the side of the ship to stab the enemy vessel in order to sink it. They had simply given her a curious look and returned to their duties. It was at that point that Mimi decided not to make any more suggestions regarding weaponry. Then again, it was roughly at this point that mutinous, color-loving stacks of chairs began inhabiting the Silver Pumpkin, so maybe the shock of it simply scared her off of suggesting things.

"Okay then," She shouted after him enthusiastically. "I'll just talk to you when you've got more time!"

Given how random Tanek's actions were, that would be a while. So, given her newfound chunk of free time, Mimi decided to sit with Sora in silence. Watching silently over her friend gave her a sense of peace. The poor girl was safe even when Mimi wasn't there, sure, but being able to see her with her own eyes made all the difference in Mimi's eyes. Walking back through the door to where Sora was held, Mimi noticed a lack of the distinct flowery scent Sora produced. Mimi had first thought the fact that she remembered Sora's scent to be sort of creepy, especially since the last person with a specific smell that she remembered meeting was her uncle Fred; reeking of cigars and motor oil.

At first she figured Sora was merely wearing perfume, but she eventually realized that Tanek also had a scent: Smoke. Tanek smelled like the smoke from a campfire, T.K smelled like the Laundromat, and her ship smelled like dried roses. Everything of significance had a scent that she could easily pick out from a hundred feet away, even if it was mixed in with many other smells. She'd asked Tanek to explain it, and he'd merely mumbled something about enhanced senses and gone back to staring out his window like her father did that one year when he was taking all that special medicine he refused to talk about. He never did explain what he was sick with.

Mimi looked through the various rooms, figuring that maybe Sora had taken a nice warm bath and it had washed off the smell. Murmuring to herself in confusion, Mimi glanced out the window to see the drawbridge lowering and Tanek stepping out as he occasionally did. It was funny, though, that Tanek seemed to be clothed in odd rags, wearing his hair differently, and sporting a pair of breasts. He also seemed to be running in no particular direction, and was most definitely Sora. How unlike Tanek, to be someone he was not. Being Sora was much more Sora's department, since she was Sora.

Snapping out of her daze, Mimi quickly came to the realization that Sora was outside among the dangerous elements. "Hey!" She shouted out the window, simply causing Sora to run faster. "Stop!" She shouted again, knowing full well that Sora had no intention of listening. Deciding that stairs were a sucker's middleman, Mimi leapt out the window with little regard for the precious bones that held her equally precious organs in place. As luck would have it, however, Mimi managed to grasp her situation rather quickly, and she reflexively drew her sword. Attempting to dig it into the castle walls in order to slow her descent, she began a slight panic when this simply caused the blade to bounce off of a barrier and fly off in a random direction. "Oh fudge!" She shouted as her speed increased. She attempted to grab on to something, only to bounce off of the same barrier her sword had. Her third-to-last thought before hitting the ground was that of eating fudge, her second-to-last last was that she could not believe her last thought was going to be about fudge, and her final thought was of the odd 'Crisis Mode Engaged' window flashing in front of her eyes.

This was her last thought not because of a soon-to-follow death, but because thought became lost to her at that moment. Her eyes became narrowed and drained of most of their usual color, glazing over with a deep, dark blue void. The worried smile she had been wearing because she'd always wanted to die smiling had been replaced with a vicious snarl, and the very air around her began to blacken. That was not to say the black winds around her began to kick up as they tended to. On the contrary, all winds and natural movement around her seemed to cease entirely. With a gesture, her sword reappeared in its scabbard only to be drawn as she deftly smashed her arm through the barrier and into the castle walls; the barrier feebly attempting to push her back out. The entire show did little, however, as she had nearly reached the bottom by the time she entered this odd crisis mode.

Sora screamed as Mimi hit the ground, crashing through the drawbridge and falling into the moat. She had barely registered what had happened before she saw a body fall full-force through the bridge and into the foul smelling liquid surrounding the castle. Had Tanek thrown one of his soldiers out the window in a rage? Surely she'd been found out. Sora took this as a sign to run faster. She couldn't believe how easy it had been to escape the castle. Then again, she figured, the place was probably designed to keep people from getting in. Keeping people from trying to leave was probably what the dungeon she'd seen on her way out was for. Even so, ninety-nine flights of stairs took a lot out of her, and that was taking the stairs in the back that were labeled 'Express Stairway'. If the back stairs took that long, how long did the front stairs take to climb? Was it too much to ask that the occasional crazed kidnapper install an elevator? This was why villains always lost: They were just so inconvenient.

The princess had only made it a few steps, however, before hearing another splash. Figuring Tanek had tossed out another soldier, she didn't feel any immediate need to turn around. She wouldn't have to, as it turned out, as Mimi had leapt out of the water and landed square in front of Sora with her sword drawn; cutting a deep line through the sand at her feet in an successful effort to kick a wall sand up into her prisoner's path. Sputtering, Sora turned to run in several other directions only to be met with Mimi and a wall of sand every time.

"Stop running!" Mimi shouted with frustration and concern in her voice. "I don't want to bury you in all this sand!" She shouted some more as Sora failed to stop running. "This is for your own good, you know." She said in a more soothing tone as she continued blocking path after path with walls of sand. "Sora, I mean it now! Stop running or else!" She screamed, pulling her sword out of the sand and raising it to the tip of Sora's nose. It was the emptiest threat Mimi had ever made in her life, including the time she'd threatened to kick Davis to Spain if he kept asking how many boyfriends she'd had, but it did get Sora to stop.

"Look," Mimi started. "I'm not supposed to talk to you, but I guess I already have, and you seem to be holding together alright…" She said hesitantly. "I'm sorry if you don't like the castle. I mean, personally I think it's a little creepy, but I think Tanek is just trying to scare off all of the people after him. Some of the rooms are beyond help, sure, but most of them just need a very trendy and attractive woman's touch." Mimi babbled as she tooted her own horn. "Anyways, I need you to come back inside now, okay? We can keep you safe in there, and we can even fix you so you can remember me!"

"No." Sora answered plainly, glaring at the odd woman across from her. She was pretty flighty for someone who just survived a twelve hundred foot drop into monster-infested goop. "I'm not going anywhere, and I don't know you."

"I need you to come inside now…" Mimi started with mild panic in her voice. Nobody loved their friends like Sora Takenouchi. It seemed ludicrous to even consider the possibility that Sora didn't remember her. Mimi couldn't bring herself to actually hurt Sora, could she? T.K was one thing. She was just firing at his ship, not attacking him with a sword.

"No!" Sora repeated at she smacked the flat of Mimi's blade away. "Leave me alone."

"Fine!" Was the black knight's response as she picked Sora up by the shirt and hurled her back into the castle. Caught off-guard, Sora merely braced for impact as she was caught in the waiting arms of the very woman who'd thrown her. "How did you…?" Sora started in a daze. "Let me go!" She shouted as she came to her senses, punching ineffectively at her captor's face.

"I need you to come inside now…" Mimi mumbled to herself somberly as she her face was pummeled with what felt like fist-sized raindrops. Eventually growing tired of having her sight blocked by fists, she dropped Sora only to pick her up in a slightly less dignified manner. Just like Tanek said: Talking to Sora only made her violent. Mimi merely held her friend's arms locked in a bear hug as she began her long trek back up the stairs. "You're gonna be okay, I swear." She whispered assuredly to the struggling princess. She would get her friends through this, no matter what it took.

"I am not, you stupid cow!" Sora screeched at the black-clad woman holding her in such a way as to make her feel like an idiot. 'Cow' was probably not the most creative or civilized of insults, but it felt good given the circumstances. "Tanek is insane and I'm sure you are, too. You'll both probably kill me once you lure the others here."

"Hey!" Mimi shouted, dropping Sora to the ground in anger as the black winds kicked up around her as they tended to when she was angry. "I am not a cow! I only weigh a hundred and three pounds, and that's with my winter weight!" She finished, fuming at the insult. She remained oblivious to the parts where she'd been called stupid, insane, or a potential murderer. That wasn't important when her weight was being called into question. "I weigh less than you, Miss hundred and thirtyish."

"It's muscle, Mimi! Remember how I play sports? How many times to I have to tell you: Muscle weighs more…than…" Sora caught herself in the middle of a lecture she'd given countless times, noticing the bright smile on the formerly bitter woman's face. "…Mimi?" She asked, more to herself than to the psychotic, sword wielding, abnormally strong maniac who had just carried her very uncomfortably up a good fifty flights of stairs.

"You remember!" Mimi screamed with ear-piercing glee as she knelt down to cling to her friend. "Oh, thank goodness you remember!" She sobbed with joy. She hadn't been this happy since that one time, where that one thing happened. Really, she was too happy to go remembering random details from her past. Considering that random past events seemed to be most of what her thoughts consisted of, she must have been pretty happy.

_Finally! 14 pages of.. goodness? Sorry we kept you guys waiting ha.. My other half seemed to get a case of writers block ha. We've already got about 2 pages of chapter 7 and some really good ideas comin' up. Thanks for being loyal._

_Peace._


	7. AUTHORS NOTE!

Dear fanbase,

We have re-read the beginning chapters of Digi-Unlock and dubbed it unreadable and terribly written!

We have rewritten **all **the chapters plus finished chapter 7 and are halfway through chapter 8. These will be uploaded at the end of the month with the new chapters. These will probably be updated under a different Pen Name, as "Zero Output" is more known for silly PWP Gundam Wing fanfiction… but we'll let you know.

We'll let you know right away when these new chapters are up. Thanks so much for the read, hopefully we will attract more fans by fixing these chapters, we encourage anyone who has read this story to go back and give it another read, as we have changed a few things, such as Ken's whereabouts in the story. Not too much has changed, but since we had written the first few chapters at age 14 and 15, and we are now 20 and 21, our writing style has changed a lot.

Thanks so much for your patience and we promise to have everything up by the end of the month.

-some digi fans


	8. Chapter 8

We have rewritten Digi-Unlock and moved it to it's own account. You can find the link here: /digiunlock

Please re-read the fanfic even if you have read it before. We have added so much to it, it's crazy! We have not added the new chapter yet. Coming soon haha.. Thanks for stickin' it out!


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